 to reopen the long-shuttered Michigan Central Station by mid-2023. When the centerpiece of Ford’s new Corktown campus does open to the public, visitors can expect to see a lot of unique art. Coming Soon from Ford: All-new 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning changes the truck game for […] "'Pin It")
Michigan Central Station Will Feature Lots of Art
Photo: Ford/Library Street Collective
Ford Motor Company is still on track (pun INTENDED) to reopen the long-shuttered Michigan Central Station by mid-2023. When the centerpiece of Ford’s new Corktown campus does open to the public, visitors can expect to see a lot of unique art.
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Take, for example, the photo up top. What do you see? Do you see snowpeople made out of, I dunno, belts or baguettes or something? It doesn’t matter. It’s art, and it’s subjective. And that’s exactly what you can expect when you visit Michigan Central Station.
Ford promises that the space will be filled with various creations from local artists covering a wide range of mediums. Expect everything from paintings to performance art to graffiti to, yes, humanoid noodle sculptures.
“The idea is to create a spectrum of different art opportunities in the project because not everyone is a painter, sculptor, or has the ability to do digital art, so we’re really trying to create diversity in the artists themselves, their perspective and also in the art tools and mediums they might use,” said Farmboy Fine Arts Vice President Ariel Grue Lee. Farmboy Fine Arts is Ford’s art advisory overseeing the project.
“The vision is to have art help tell the story of each space through the lens of past, present, future and permeate the environment as much as possible,” Grue Lee added. “The magic will be in the mix.”
The goal is to lift up the voices of local artists and turn Michigan Central into a thriving space for culture.
Michigan Central stars in digital art exhibit
While the rejuvenation of Michigan Central Station continues on through the end of 2022, the iconic landmark is the focal point of an art exhibit in Detroit. SITE: Michigan Central Station, hosted by Library Street Collective, digitally places artwork in the unfinished space — including the noodle golems.
The piece in question is called Mango Tourist and was created by Nari Ward. So what is it made of, you ask? Foam, battery canisters, resistors and capacitors, and mango pits. Ward says that the work is “talking about support, economic growth, coming not from a local grid, but from a tourism grid. Power that’s not local, but coming from somewhere else.”
Photo: Ford/Library Street Collective
Another work on display is Sanford Biggers’ BAM (for Michael), which takes African wooden statues and pieces them together to create a larger “power object.” Biggers created this and similar sculptures in 2014 as a response to the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
The exhibit runs through Sept. 15, and Library Street Collective is pledging 10 percent of all proceeds from works sold during the run to MexicantownCDC. Ford selected the program to receive proceeds for its work with Detroit’s Latinx culture.
Ford originally purchased Michigan Central Station from the Moroun family in 2018.
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Kyle S. Johnson lives in Cincinnati, a city known by many as “the Cincinnati of Southwest Ohio.” He enjoys professional wrestling, Halloween, and also other things. He has been writing for a while, and he plans to continue to write well into the future. See more articles by Kyle.