Home > Lists > 3 Lists of 9 Detroit artists
This whole thing of listing nine Detroit artists started with Carl Swanson's epic blunder for Vulture, in which he misled Detroit artists and art experts into thinking he was writing a travelogue when in fact he was writing a list of 9 white artists who live in Detroit. Maybe there was no way the clueless New Yorker could have satisfied Detroiters, but at least it would have been more honest to title his article "9 white artists who live in Detroit."
Instead he titled it "Is Soho in the '70s Just a Two-Hour Flight Away? 9 Artists on Why They Live in Detroit." (We will not provide a link but it's found easily enough). The title is problematic on several counts. The emphasis on "why" suggests that maybe the artists are crazy to live in Detroit or they don't have the financial means to live somewhere else. If you try to see the title more charitably it also leads to problems: maybe these artists know something we don't, but it's only white artists who know this.
Here's Swanson's slate, but please keep in mind that these nine artists were just as surprised by Swanson's article as everyone else:
A lot of people pointed out that Carl Swanson mentions that Detroit has a mostly black population yet mentions no black artists. "But where are the Latino artists? What about artists who were born in another country but have lived here in Detroit for years?" asked Alonso del Arte. "A list of nine black artists is not the answer," he added. Al's list for Examiner.com copies over two artists from Swanson's slate but adds black artists, and also one American-born Latino artist and one immigrant.
Al presented his list in alphabetical order by last name:
A list of nine black artists is precisely what arts.black's Taylor Aldridge delivered.