Detroit Arts and Culture Director Rochelle Riley will deliver the inaugural State of The Arts address on arts funding and creative placemaking.
Mayor Mike Duggan will celebrate the 16 inaugural recipients of the Detroit ACE Honors in a ceremony at 2 p.m. Tuesday, April 12 at the Department of Public Safety headquarters. The ceremony will be livestreamed to the City’s Facebook and You Tube pages and can be seen on City Channel 22. The ACE Honors show that honors the recipients will be presented at 7 p.m. Tuesday evening on Channel 22 in the city and on Comcast Channel 900 to be viewed statewide.
The awards salute lifetime achievement and celebrate artists and arts patrons who have contributed 25 years or more of exceptional service to Detroit arts and culture.
The awards ceremony will be followed by the inaugural City State of the Arts address to be given by Director of Arts and Culture Rochelle Riley. She will lay out a vision to sustain Detroit’s creative workforce, which includes fine and performing artists that are among the best in the country. She also will salute the Kresge and Ford foundations and the Detroit’s first City Historian.
The ACE awards are modeled after the Kennedy Center Honors. The honorees will receive a Medal of Excellence as part of the first class of ACE Honorees. The recipients include three Kresge Eminent Artists, selected for excellence in the visual, performing or literary arts. They are the late Charles McGee, the late David DiChiera and Shirley Woodson.
The honorees in the inaugural ACE class are:
ELIZABETH “BETTY” BROOKS Board member of the Detroit Historical Society, Motown Museum, Detroit Jazz Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, and the Michigan Opera Theatre.
DAVID DICHIERA Founder of Michigan Opera Theatre and former President of Opera America, recipient of the Opera Honors Award by the National Endowment for the Arts, the nation’s highest award for lifetime achievement in opera and Kresge Eminent Artist (2013).
ROBERT S. DUNCANSON Prolific painter known for sweeping, large-scale landscapes; established a studio in Detroit in 1849, where he would become the most accomplished African American painter of the 1850s and 1860s.; considered to be the first African American artist to gain international recognition and proclaimed by the American media as “the best landscape painter in the West.”
LEROY FOSTER Fine portrait painter and muralist known for public commissions, including “The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass,” “Kaleidoscope” and “Renaissance City;” graduate of Cass Technical High School and L’Academie de la Grand Chaumeire in Paris; founded the Contemporary Studio with Charles McGee, Harold Neal and Henri Umbaji King.
TYREE GUYTON Neo-expressionist artist and creator of the internationally renowned Heidelberg Project; studied at the College for Creative Studies and awarded an honorary Doctorate of Fine Art; featured in the Detroit Institute of Art, the University of Michigan Museum of Art and the Studio Museum of Harlem as well as in the Emmy Award-Winning Documentary “Come Unto Me;” Kresge Visual Arts Fellow (2009).
VERA HEIDELBERG Co-chair of the first Classical Roots Celebration, an annual concert sponsored by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra recognizing African American contributions to classical music; charter member of the Greater Wayne County Chapter of The Links, a women’s organization that seeks to enhance quality of life in African American communities
ARTIS LANE Portrait artist and sculptor known for works featuring President John F. Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Henry Kissinger, Barbara Bush, Rosa Parks, Michael Jordan and Aretha Franklin; first woman to be admitted to the prestigious Cranbrook Art Academy; awarded the Women of Excellence Award by the Museum of African American Art Award in Los Angeles
CHARLES MCGEE Prolific painter and sculptor with work featured at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, the Brooklyn Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art; founder of the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit; advised the State of Michigan, City of Detroit and numerous local arts institutions on cultural initiatives; first Kresge Eminent Artist (2008).
CARLOS NIELBOCK Master architectural ornamental metal and design artist, engineer and craftsman, with work featured in the Fox Theater restoration; inventor of the Detroit Windmill, the first and only fully upcycled, low level wind turbine; UNESCO Detroit City of Design Ambassador and Honorary Member of the American Institute of Architects; founder of C.A.N. Art Handworks, an ornamental architectural metals studio.
DUDLEY RANDALL The City of Detroit’s first Poet Laureate; called “the Father of the Black Poetry Movement” by Black Enterprise Magazine; founder of Broadside Press, author of A Litany of Friends: New and Selected Poems and More to Remember: Poems of Four Decades and editor of The Black Poets and For Malcom: Poems on the Life and Death of Malcolm X.
GRETCHEN VALADE Philanthropist and leading patron of numerous Detroit arts institutions, including the Detroit Jazz Festival and Wayne State University’s jazz program; founder of Grammy Award-winning Mack Avenue Records and the Gretchen C. Valade Endowment for the Arts; chairwoman of Carhartt Inc. and owner of the Dirty Dog Jazz Café and Morning Glory Coffee.
MARILYN WHEATON Longtime Director of the City of Detroit’s Cultural Affairs Department, Concerned Citizens for the Arts in Michigan and the Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum on the Saginaw Valley State University campus; helped orchestrate art for the Detroit Tricentennial Celebration, including the International Memorial to the Underground Railroad on the Detroit riverfront.
DEBRA WHITE-HUNT Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the Detroit-Windsor Dance Academy; choreographer for more than 50 ballets and director of more than 100 dance concerts; commissioned to create her works on stage, television, film and video; recipient of numerous national and local awards for her excellence in the arts and education; Kresge Arts Fellow (2020).
SHIRLEY WOODSON Iconic painter known for large-scale figurative work featured in the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History; long-time Detroit Public Schools teacher and Supervisor of Fine Arts; co-founder of the Michigan Chapter of the National Conference of Artists; Kresge Eminent Artist (2021).
THE KRESGE FOUNDATION Each year, the ACE Awards will salute philanthropy, which has elevated and sustained Detroit arts and culture for decades. Our first recipient is the Kresge Foundation, which since 2008, has awarded more than $6.7 million through Kresge Arts in Detroit’s Kresge Eminent Artist Awards, Kresge Artist Fellowships and Gilda Awards. Kresge is receiving special recognition this year for sustaining the Office of Arts, Culture, and Entrepreneurship through its first two years and providing vital operational support as it joins the mayor’s mission to place focus on the City’s creative arts industry, which is one of the best in the nation.
JAMON JORDAN, the first official CITY OF DETROIT HISTORIAN, an honorary position that is both ceremonial and educational and is given to an individual who has a demonstrated knowledge of Detroit’s cultural history from local, regional and international perspectives.
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