2019 MAC Annual Meeting Tours

Detroit Mural Project Tour (walking - approximately 3 miles)

THURSDAY, April 4
10:00 am–11:30 am
Meet LAC representative in lobby, will depart at 10:00 am
Capacity: 14 people
Fee: $5

Join our plenary speaker, Viranel Clerard, founder and curator of the Detroit Mural Project, on a walking tour through downtown Detroit’s art landscape. Detroit has become one of the most vibrant centers of street art in the country. Hundreds of murals from some of the most famous street artists in the world, and gifted local artists, now grace Downtown, Eastern Market, Southwest Detroit, and the Grand River corridor. Bringing an inspired jolt of creativity, street art illuminates the civic and ethnic identity of Detroit’s neighborhoods. Street art is a metaphor and a manifestation, promising a better future, while breathing life into the city. The tour will examine Detroit’s transformation through the resurgence of authorized and unauthorized street art. Viranel Clerard will provide a guided tour through Detroit’s art history and culture.


Walter P. Reuther Library and Burton Historical Collection Tour 

THURSDAY, April 4
9:10 am–12:30 pm
Meet LAC representative in lobby, shuttle will depart at 9:10am, return by 12:30 pm.
Capacity: 30 people
Free

This tour offers a look at not, one, but two Detroit historical repositories, located just across the street from each other!

The Reuther Library is the largest labor archives in North America and is home to the collections of numerous unions and labor-related organizations. Its collection strengths extend to the political and community life of urban and metropolitan Detroit, the civil rights movement in Michigan and nationally, and women’s struggles in the workplace. The Reuther Library is also the home of the Wayne State University Archives, established s in 1958. The Reuther has a capacity of 75,000 linear feet of archival materials spanning these three collection areas, as well as extensive audiovisual and digital collections. The tour will offer behind-the-scenes access to processing and storage areas as well as to examples from some of the archives’ most-used collections, such as the UFW Office of the President: Cesar Chavez Records, the Walter P. Reuther Papers, Mayors Jerome Cavanagh and Coleman Young Papers, midcentury architect Minoru Yamasaki Papers, and organizational records such as those of the Jewish Community Archives, the Detroit Commission on Community Relations, Focus: HOPE, and more.

The Burton Historical Collection, located in the beautiful Main Branch of the Detroit Public Library, was established in 1915 with the donation of the private library of Clarence Monroe Burton, a prominent attorney and Detroit historiographer. Burton’s collecting focused on the early history of Detroit, Michigan, and the Northwest Territory from the time of the French traders through the early twentieth century. The Burton Historical Collection has continued to grow and now proudly offers to the public more than 500,000 books, 250,000 images, 4,000 manuscript collections, and about 1,000 newspaper titles covering about 400 years of North American history with a heavy focus on Detroit, but also including more geographically distant events like the Salem Witch Trials and the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The tour will include a guided walk through the Burton Reading Room, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at materials located in the closed stacks.

Benson Ford Research Center and Main Storage Building, The Henry Ford Tour

THURSDAY, April 4
8:30 am–12:30 pm
Meet LAC representative in the hotel lobby, shuttle will depart at 8:30 am, return by 12:30 pm.
Capacity: 24 people
Fee: $5

Visit one of the Detroit area’s oldest and largest cultural institutions with a tour of archival, library, and museum storage at The Henry Ford in nearby Dearborn! Dedicated in 1929, and celebrating its 90th anniversary during 2019, The Henry Ford is home to more than a million 3-D artifacts and over 50,000 linear feet of archival and library materials that together help tell stories of America’s traditions of ingenuity, resourcefulness, and innovation. The first half of the tour will feature the archival and library storage areas located in the Benson Ford Research Center and highlight unique items from those holdings including the historic business records of the Ford Motor Company, an extensive trade catalog collection, and automotive and industrial design materials. In the second half of the tour, you will visit the recently opened Main Storage Building, which is quickly becoming the new home for The Henry Ford’s large collection of automobiles, as well as providing processing and storage spaces for 2-D and 3-D objects and collections. Please note that considerable walking will be required on the tour. Transportation will be provided, leaving from and returning to the conference hotel.

Black Bottom and Paradise Valley Walking Tour (walking - approximately 3 miles)

THURSDAY, April 4
8:45 am–12:00 pm
Meet LAC representative in the hotel lobby, will depart at 8:45 am.
Capacity: 14 people
Fee: $5

The Lower eastside of Detroit, home to Eastern Market, Lafayette Park, and the Islandview neighborhood is one of the most historically significant neighborhoods in Detroit's history.

This neighborhood has a long history that includes the Indigenous Anishinaabe people, French farmers who gave the area a name that would last over 300 years, and the highest concentrated population of African Americans in Detroit from the 1800s to the 1950s.

Slated to receive a Michigan Historical Marker this year, and the subject of books, research projects and the Black Bottom Street View project by Emily Kutil, Black Bottom has been a major topic of interest in the past few years! Please join historian and educator Jamon Jordan on a 3 mile tour of what was Black Bottom, the historic African American neighborhood that was destroyed by federal, state, and local policymakers. The tour, will include a visit to historic homesites, schools, houses of worship and businesses. We will also visit the site of Paradise Valley, the African American business and entertainment district that was destroyed by the building of the I-375 & I-75 freeway. This walking tour is vital in understanding the rich history of African Americans in the city of Detroit.

Detroit Institute of Arts Research Library & Archives and Museum Tour

THURSDAY, April 4
9:10 am–12:30 pm
Meet LAC representative in the hotel lobby, shuttle will depart at 9:10 am, return by 12:30 pm
Capacity: 25 people
Free

The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), one of the premier art museums in the United States, is home to more than 65,000 works that comprise a multicultural survey of human creativity from ancient times through the twenty-first century. Notable acquisitions include the first Van Gogh painting to enter a US museum (Self-Portrait, 1887), and The Wedding Dance (Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1566). The DIA’s collection is known for its quality, range, and depth. The tour starts behind the scenes of the DIA Research Library and Archives, one of the largest museum libraries in the nation. It will include highlights from the collection of primary sources and rare books, and a walk through of the storage spaces. A short docent-led tour of the museum will follow, to include Rivera Court and the DIA’s world-renowned Detroit Industry Murals.