In its Midtown district, Detroit boasts a concentrated set of high-powered cultural institutions. Clustered around the DIA, they include the Detroit Historical Museum, The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, the Michigan Science Center, and the Detroit Public Library. In recent years, this complex has been the object of urban planning and a landscape design competition. This panel brings together leading experts and participants in this process to reflect on its challenges and promises:

How might Detroit’s museums and cultural institutions better serve the city’s communities and empower its people? How do these institutions envision their own futures and how have they collaborated in this process with their Detroit partners? How have they responded to the twin pandemics of systemic racism and Covid-19?

The panelists will share their experience with cultural programming, education, urban and museum planning in Detroit and discuss Detroit’s Cultural Center Planning Initiative. At the heart of this initiative stands The Detroit Square, a bold landscape design proposal that would transform the cultural district and create synergy between museums, visitors, and urban space in the heart of Detroit.

Panelists:

Anya Sirota, Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Initiatives at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and founding principal of Akoaki

Harley Etienne, Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Michigan

Oliver Ragsdale, President and CEO, The Carr Center

Elana Rugh, President, CEO and Executive Director, Detroit Historical Society

Register here.

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