The Next Big Thing In Detroit

The cut of glory.

After all the hard times and hard work, we get to reap the rewards.

In Detroit, all that's left to claim is the slice of glory.

A staunch group of holdouts who held on to the city through its decades as a national benchmark for urban decay and crime, when it broke and broke, has done the hardest work. I have seen the most difficult times.

Today, its refusal to accept that Detroit was hopeless makes it one of the most exciting cities in America. That's okay.

Husband and wife Anthony and JJ Curis were two of the resisters.

They have poured into Detroit for decades. The most recognizable are its art gallery Library Street Collective and The Belt, a rehabilitated alley that the gallery calls home that is also home to trendy restaurants and nightclubs. Then there is the public art and the murals with which they have populated the city.

Beyond the public eye, thousands of hours collaborating, planning, arm-twisting, petitioning, meeting, pulling, pushing, advocating, fundraising, and doing the uncelebrated work of trying to turn a city around.

His efforts, and those of Detroit's other unbreakable champions, were initially focused on downtown. Having achieved one of the most amazing urban comeback stories ever told, the emphasis has now shifted to neighborhoods.

On May 18, 2024, the Curis will debut their most ambitious project to date, Little Village, a new cultural corridor in the East Village neighborhood. Focused on art, architecture, landscaping and waterfront access, Little Village is anchored by the Shepherd, the former Good Shepherd originally built in 1911.

“I fell in love with the idea that the history of this neighborhood and how it developed, a lot of it was done around this church,” Anthony Curis told Forbes.com. “Maybe we could find a way to help generate things in this neighborhood around the church in a similar way.”

El Pastor has been transformed into a cultural arts center, keeping intact the integrity of the original architecture.

“My wife and I are preservationists at heart, we value history and architecture and preservation in general,” Curis said. “Our own house, similarly, we went through a very long restoration and preservation and then we put that house on the federal historic register, which is something we also intend to do with this space.”

Two new gallery spaces have been added to the nave and a transept. The other transept houses the Little Village Library, curated by Asmaa Walton, founder of Detroit's Black Art Library, which brings together artist monographs, exhibition catalogs, and research materials focusing on artists of color who have made contributions to the publicly accessible Michigan arts.

The Shepherd will also host live performances and larger installations in the central crossing, apses and a mezzanine above the main gallery.

Anthony Curis is a real estate developer. JJ Curis' background is in finance. The couple could have focused their revitalization efforts in a hundred different and necessary directions for the city. Why art and culture?

“When we first met, we shared an appreciation for the arts, and it was something we were passionate about, traveling and collecting and seeing how art has impacted communities,” said Anthony Curis. “It's really snowballed. (Library Street Collective) was never really a business. It was our way of challenging each other about how we could use the gallery as a vehicle for change, so that's what we've always focused on both in public projects, town planning and public spaces, things outside of bricks and mortar.”

Charles McGee

Adjacent to the Shepherd is the Charles McGee Legacy Park.

“In my opinion, Charles is the most important artist of the last century in the city of Detroit,” said Anthony Curis. “His impact on this community, the work he's done both in the studio and in the public space, his focus on staying in Detroit when, as an artist at the time, it was almost impossible. Charles maintained it and lived his whole life here and was passionate about it.”

The sculpture garden features three large-scale pieces by McGee (1942-2021) and debuts the artist's first figurative work in public sculpture. McGee completed designs for Legacy Park ahead of his passing in 2021.

“That sculpture garden was the last project Charles worked on,” Curis said. “We spent a lot of time with him in the evolution of that project; We're excited for the world city to experience this.”

To further honor McGee, in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the inaugural exhibition at the Shepherd will be an expansive survey of his work. “Charles McGee: Time is Now” will be on view from May 18 to July 20, 2024. MOCAD and the Library Street Collective will present a sister exhibition at MOCAD, titled “Kinship: The Legacy of Gallery 7,” from June 28 to September 23, 2024.

All That And Then Some

The grounds immediately surrounding the Shepherd offer more than 3.5 hectares of new park and green space accessible to the public, including a public skatepark with the functional design directed by Tony Hawk. The only one.

World-renowned artist McArthur Binion oversaw the artistic design elements. Binion's foundation, Modern Ancient Brown, occupies part of the third floor of the former rectory of the church now known as ALEO. Modern Ancient Brown supports the intersection of the visual and literary arts in Detroit and sponsors two artist residency programs, one of which is facilitated through ALEO.

A boutique bed and breakfast will also open on the second floor of ALEO with the rectory's first floor centered around common spaces for events and social programming.

Just wait! There's more!

BridgeHouse is right behind the church and next to the skatepark.

Two empty residential houses have been converted into four small commercial spaces intended for culinary uses. Both houses have been restored and are now encapsulated within a two-story deck that offers outdoor space and opportunities to view the skatepark, grounds, and intimate performances.

BridgeHouse features a new restaurant from James Beard Award-winning pastry chef Warda Bouguettaya, who will serve breakfast exclusively to ALEO guests.

The old Shepherd's garage has been transformed into a cocktail bar, Father Forgive Me.

“Trying to retain as much of that original character of these communities is so important, unfortunately, a lot of the neighborhood was torn down starting in the '70s and '80s,” Curis said. “We've been really determined to try to preserve as many structures as we can.”

A few blocks from El Pastor, the Curises are transforming a former commercial bakery and warehouse building, now vacant, into a mixed-use arts center that will serve as headquarters for two local arts NGOs, Signal-Return and PASC ( Progressive). Arts Studio Collective).

Named LANTERNA, the building will include 5,300 square feet of affordable artist studio space and nearly 4,000 square feet of creative retail, all connected by a 2,000-square-foot outdoor courtyard envisioned as an accessible community space and a lobby the open air .

LANTERN also opens to the public in May 2024.

“We see our role in all of this as trying to bring the community together and use art as a vehicle; to bring current residents, future residents, other arts organizations (to the neighborhood) and find ways to create positive change in the community,” Curis said.

In about a year, a contemporary art gallery and a space for projects initiated by the Curises will move to an old convent building next to El Pastor. The new location of Louis Buhl and Co. will offer a bespoke gallery space, its first in-house production studio and an outdoor patio for outdoor programming.

After that, another big one: Stanton Yards.

The new waterfront destination located in the Little Village neighborhood along the Detroit River transforms a service- and storage-based marina into a 13-acre community cultural amenity with more than 80,000 square feet of retail and creative space, 85 departures from boats and waterfront parks. .

The adaptive reuse of four existing pre-war industrial buildings at Stanton Yards will create a campus for arts organizations, creative businesses, artist studios, independent hospitality businesses and more.

“I think there are still some people who have a negative perception of the city that need to come and take another look at it because there are so many great things happening right now in the city of Detroit,” Curis said.

He and his wife are obviously not the authors of all of them.

It takes a city

All over Detroit, artists and arts organizations are putting points on the board, improving the quality of life.

Sidewalk Detroit, an organization working at the intersection of environmental justice, public art and community building, is unveiling the Detroit Remediation Forest on May 18, 2024, the same day Little Village opens. Sculptor and activist Jordan Weber's site-specific regenerative installation in East Canfield Village emerged as a response to the alarming environmental challenges facing the community there.

Extending an existing green space, DRF offers a space designed for community recreation, air-purifying plants, a large-scale sculpture titled New Forest, Ancient Thronesand architectural elements that facilitate both forest bathing and monitoring the neighborhood's air quality.

Elsewhere, the inaugural Detroit IMPACT Arts Conference runs for three days starting June 24^th. The event will feature a series of workshops, panels and conversations designed to engage Detroit's arts community ahead of the fourth annual Obsidian Theater Festival June 27-30.

Obsidian Theater Festival Producing Artistic Director John Sloan III and Blackboard Plays founder Garlia Cornelia Jones, both natives of Detroit, have received $500,000 from the Mellon Foundation in support of their Propulsion Theater Project, a project dedicated to creating works that amplify the city's theater community. The new effort will partner with Detroit's for-profit, nonprofit and municipal entities, driving cultural exchange, workforce development, artistic creativity and economic empowerment through the performing arts .

“It's amazing,” Curis said. “There's more going on now than I've ever seen and at this point it seems sustainable.”