Photo courtesy of Pexels
By Lawrence Price, Special to the Michigan Chronicle
The month of June commemorating Pride Month might be drawing to a close, but things are still going locally in the City of Detroit and beyond celebrating activities galore.
Mighty Real/Queer Detroit, the not-for-profit organization committed to promoting positive and meaningful images of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ+) community through artistic and intellectual means, will commemorate the end of Pride Month 2021 with a special announcement regarding next year’s celebration.
The group will state its plans to host for the first time a grand-scale representation of the range and depth of Detroit queer art. The organization is curating what it plans as the largest exhibition of queer art ever assembled in the nation.
The announcement was made during a panel discussion at 1 p.m. today (June 30) on facebook.com/cityofdetroit, featuring Mighty Real/Queer Detroit’s President Patrick Burton, Vice Presidents Pamela Alexander and Tony Whitfield, DIA Program Manager Rudy Lauerman and Rochelle Riley, the City’s Director of Arts and Culture. The presentation highlighted the background of Mighty Real/Queer Detroit and the artwork that will be presented at the exhibition
The exhibition will highlight the diversity of the LGBTQ+ Detroit community and aims to empower, affirm and transcend. It will feature the work of more than 100 artists of local, national and global stature.
Galleries that have confirmed their participation include: Collected Detroit, Galerie Camille, Hatch, M Contemporary Art, the Anton Art Center, Norwest Gallery, the Scarab Club and Artcite in Windsor, Canada. MRQD expects the exhibit to open in more than 20 sites across the city of Detroit, according to a press release.
As a further exploration, the exhibit will address loss and remembrance by including significant, rarely seen and unexhibited art objects. For the first time, works by artists who died of AIDS in the 1980s and ’90s will be exhibited. Those works include never-before-seen work by Brian Buczak, Timothy Gass, Marcus Mannino and Constantine Tsatsanis. MRQD also will host a special tribute to the legendary Detroit artist LeRoy Foster and poets Beth Brant and Terri Jewell.
The Mighty Real/Queer Detroit (MRQD) exhibition coincides with Detroit’s 50th Pride Anniversary Celebration and includes the traditional celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride. But they want everyone to be a part of a month-long reflection on the diversity of the community and its longtime allies. Historically, this is a time to commemorate the advances of queer people and to honor their past experience and achievement. The exhibit is occurring during a time of heightened significance, especially in the current environment of political uncertainty.
In many Black families, the African American man has traits of strength, protection, and embodies masculinity. Historically, Black men who identify as a part of the LGBTQ+ community are sometimes separated and viewed in a negative light, per cultural commentary and national reports. However, as the world opens its arms to people of the LGBTQ+ community (like this exhibit and celebration) it resembles a step toward a more accepting, understanding, and inclusive world.
MRQD will, in conjunction with the exhibition, create a calendar of events highlighting panel discussions, artist talks, performances and poetry readings. The guide will be issued in all media. They also will publish a catalogue of selected artwork, including essays examining the exhibit from a variety of historical, cultural and personal perspectives.
Staff Writer Megan Kirk contributed to this report.
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