Doing Detroit

I've been to Detroit before. I visited some friends from collestadiage who now were pursuing graduate degrees at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and recall my one and only trip with them to Tiger Stadium, which I remember as a classic old ballpark. It had its own peculiar design features and had the nice flavor of an old stadium--it had previously been known as Briggs Stadium and Navin Field. On a later trip when we were showing my daughter campuses all over, we also took in the new ballpark. Comerica Park, which I remember as one of the better-designed new stadia. 

This time, the Tigers left on a road trip the day before we arrived, so no ball today. But I did see for the first time the Detroit Institute of Art, which is one of the fine museums in the U.S. The collection is solid, and I only took in the large American art section and the significant early European (Renaissance and Medieval) as well as the Dutch Golden Age. There also are good modern and contemporary galleries. The museum also has strong Egyptian and Greek and Roman divisions. 

As with other older Midwestern cities who boasted well-heeled captains of industry in their day but now have often fallen on more challenging times--St. Louis is another--the late 19th and earlier 20th century movers and shakers, used their wealth to endow the arts. So Detroit's art museum holds both superb examples of various great artistic periods and enough of an endowment to acquire newer masterpieces--or paintings they hope will become such.

The DIA can also claim to have the finest set of Diego Rivera murals installed on the four walls of a huge hall. Unlike New York, where some of Rivera's finest murals, in the newly-built Rockefeller Center, were destroyed by the supposed art aficionado Nelson Rockefeller because he wouldn't tolerate Rivera's clearly left-wing political flavor imparted to his murals, the Detroit aristocracy recognized or decided to live with Rivera's magnificent modern-day frescoes.

There's also a room of Rembrandts, usefully sharing the gallery with works attributed to his workshop or his school. The real Rembrandts are wonderful,  but in this display, it was fascinating to see how he influenced his closest followers. The representation of other Dutch artists like Frans Hals and the great landscape painters, such as Van Ruisdel and several others, is also strong. Later great painters such as Van Gogh, Gauguin, and especially Cezanne, are present with truly superb examples of their work. The curators assembled a very comprehensive gallery of Picassos, from the Rose and Blue periods,all the way through the next several decades. 

We also went through the Motown Museum, chronicling the origins and triumphs of that marvelous musical enterprise, from Smokey Robinson and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas through the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, the Four Tops, and so many others. Music fills the air as you see where Berry Gordy started the operation and brought it to its peak. I found it wonderful that not only did the late Michael Jackson donate his famous black fedora and jeweled glove, but accompanies them with a $125,000 contribution to the museum. It also was illuminating to learn about all the supremely talented behind-the-scenes talent that made the continuing Motown production of a seeemingly endless procession of hit songs and stage shows as well as films happen.

We dined at a magnificent old mansion restaurant, the Whitney, which offered a nice seafood boil served out in its garden. I did consume a "Coney Island"--Detroit's version of a hot dog, loaded with kethup, onions, mustard, and chili. Overdone in the view of this original Coney Island chauvinist: having a dog with strong deli mustard and hot sauerkraut at the first Nathan's on Surf Avenue remains for me the sine qua non of hot doggery.