On Thursday, October 22, 4-5:30 pm, join four panelists for an online discussion of the challenges of urban and museum planning in Detroit’s Midtown district and a landscape design proposal called The Detroit Square.
In the 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 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 core 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.
This event is sponsored by the Museum Studies Program at the University of Michigan. To register for the event, click on the listing in Events on their home page (http://ummsp.rackham.umich.edu/).