President's Message, February 2012
Juanita Moore, President & CEO
Black History Month is here again, and The Wright Museum welcomes you to Rejoice, Relive, and Reconnect during our most popular month of the year with new exhibits and exciting programming. Just last month, a reporter from the Chicago Tribune contacted us regarding a story for their national audience offering activities and projects families can do to celebrate Black History Month, as recommended by some of the nation’s finest museums. We were only too pleased to contribute. Here are a few of the suggestions we provided:
1) Visit your local African American museum. These institutions make it their mission to collect, preserve, and celebrate Black History throughout the year, and often have special exhibitions and events during Black History Month. Taking your children to museums can instill a lifelong love of culture! Also, African and African American art galleries, specialty shops, and African American sections of your local art museum are all great destinations.
2) Each week, choose a different field of human endeavor such as business, medicine, politics, the military, sports, or entertainment, and make it an afternoon of investigating African American achievements in those particular arenas. There's always so much to learn, including advancements being made in the present, that can inspire all of us to greatness.
3) Make a game of identifying parallels between African American achievers of the past and present; such is the focus of our annual Ford Freedom Award. Examples include Langston Hughes and Sonia Sanchez, or Jackie Robinson and Reggie Jackson (or perhaps Prince Fielder?). Using current day examples can engage young people to see historical innovators in both the past and present.
Of course, activities to mark the month are limited only by your imagination, and are just as suited to individual exploration as well as for families. Don't forget to add one or more of our exhibits and events to your calendar - as always, there's a plethora to choose from. Finally, just as the momentum from Black History Month carries the Museum through its busy season and into late summer, the information you absorb in the next four weeks need not end on February 29: as our core exhibit, And Still We Rise: Our Journey Through African American History and Culture makes clear, history has more than enough stories to hold one's interest throughout the year.
Please click here to read more...
Black History Month ExhibitsIn addition to the new exhibit, Moving to His Own Beat - Fela: The Man, The Movement, The Music, the Museum is proud to present two new exhibitions just in time for February. We Don't Want Them: A History of Detroit's Housing Segregation, on display February 1 - 27, offers a broader context to issues raised by and explored in this year's Michigan Great Read, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age, and is presented by the Michigan Humanities Council in partnership with the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion. Organized by Bank of America, Mixing Metaphors: The Aesthetic, Social and Political in African American Art is an exhibition composed of more than 90 paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, sculptures and mixed media works by 36 artists including Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden. Click here to learn more...
FELA! Benefit Performance for The Wright Museum
Friday 2/17 at 8 pm at Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts
Sponsored by Michigan Chronicle and the United Auto Workers (UAW), a portion of the proceeds from Music Hall's opening-weekend performance of the electrifying, Tony® Award-winning musical, FELA!, presented by Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter and Will & Jada Pinkett-Smith, will benefit the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. FELA! tells the true story of the legendary Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, whose soulful Afrobeat rhythms ignited a generation. FELA! is a triumphant tale of courage, passion and love, featuring Fela Kuti’s captivating music and the visionary direction and choreography of Tony Award winner Bill T. Jones. Tickets start at $37 and can be purchased online by clicking here, or by phone at 800-745-3000. Members of the Museum and the UAW receive 10% off tickets - enter promotional code "Yeah Yeah" when ordering. Purchasers of tickets at the $75 level and above can attend a special performance Afterglow to meet the cast! PLEASE NOTE: Tickets are NOT available for this performance at the Museum. For more information call (313) 887-8500.
Bank of America's Museums On Us Program
Saturday & Sunday 2/4 & 2/5
Did you know that you can get free admission to The Wright Museum and 150 other museums nationwide the first weekend of each month? Just show your photo ID and Bank of America/Merill Lynch card to take advantage of this great offer. While you're at it, check out our newest exhibit, Mixing Metaphors: The Aesthetic, Social and Political in African American Art, opening February 3 and sponsored by, you guessed it - Bank of America! Click here to learn more...
30 Days To Lose It! Call for Contestants
Submission deadline: Friday 2/17 @ 5 pm
if you're interested in competing during March's weight-loss challenge, please email your 3 - 5 minute YouTube video link explaining why you should be selected as a weight-loss contestant to 30days@chwmuseum.org. Entrants must be women in the metropolitan Detroit region who are at least 18 years old and 30 pounds overweight, and can provide medical clearance upon request to participate in such a program. Only one submission per entrant will be accepted, and only one entrant will be considered per video submission. Deadline for submissions is Friday, February 17 at 5 pm. Up to ten contestants will be selected by a panel of experts from the WW Group, St. John Providence Health System and Henry Ford Health System. Entrants must be present at 30 Days To Lose It! on Tuesday, March 6, when the contestants will be announced. The winner of the month-long challenge receives a complimentary gym membership, pass to a local Weight Watchers meeting, workout DVD and companion book, and more!
For full details please click here to read the press release.
Museum Store Sale
The Wright Gift Museum Store is kicking off a major store-wide mark down in honor of Black History Month, and to make room for new inventory. Save up to 50% on figurines, statues, jewelry and more! Call 313-494-5873 or email dsmith@chwmuseum.org for more details.
Current Exhibitions
 We Don't Want Them: A History of Detroit's Housing Segregation
Opens February 1
This traveling exhibit, a collaborative effort between the Michigan Humanities Council and Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion, uses historic photographs and documents to tell stories about Black Bottom, the 1967 Uprising and Sojourner Truth Housing Complex, showcasing the history of housing segregation in Detroit. Running through the month of February, it's part of the Michigan Humanities Council’s Great Michigan Read program, and prominently displayed in the exhibit is Dr. Ossian Sweet, the subject of this year’s Great Michigan Read, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age, by Kevin Boyle, which tells the story of Dr. Sweet and the chain of events that occurred after he purchased a home for his family in an all-white Detroit neighborhood in 1925. Click here to learn more...
 Mixing Metaphors: The Aesthetic, Social and Political in African American Art
Opens February 3
Organized and sponsored by Bank of America, Mixing Metaphors is an exhibition composed of more than 90 paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, sculptures and mixed media works by 36 artists including Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden. The exhibition draws its inspiration from the different artists’ visions and their use of technique to convey compelling stories. Body politics, race, class and gender are a few of the topics that surface in these works of art, which depict moments from the extraordinary to the mundane. Some of the artists in this exhibition base their work on stories about family life or ideas about music and love; others document experiences that transformed the twentieth century and inspired the next generation. Indeed, Mixing Metaphors will be a thought-provoking experience. Click here to learn more...
Moving to His Own Beat - Fela: The Man, The Movement, The Music
Through April 1
 Created in partnership with Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts, this exhibit examines the life of Nigerian superstar Fela Kuti in the realms of music, culture, and politics, and preludes the arrival of the off-Broadway smash musical, Fela!, in February, 2012. Fela's undying passion for African peoples, understanding of the power of art and politics, and unyielding struggle against the colonial forces in Nigeria during the 1950s and 1960s, solidified his legacy as a shimmering agent of change against the status quo. He spoke out against the ruling government, returned to African traditions that had been interrupted during Colonialism, and brilliantly used his music as a medium for social change. Always pushing the envelope, Fela infused traditional African highlife music with classical jazz and funk, which evolved into a unique sound that he called, “Afrobeat.” The powerful music and social commentary found throughout his vast catalogue of recordings is indicative of his desire to help end oppression among African peoples everywhere. Click here to learn more...
 The Chris Webber Collection: Exceptional People During Extraordinary Times, 1755 - Present
Through April 29
Chris Webber, Detroit native, National Basketball Association All-Star player (retired) and NBA announcer, collects rare artifacts that illuminate the lives and legacies of African American greats such as Phillis Wheatley, the first African American author; Rosa Parks , mother of the modern civil rights movement; civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and many others. Viewers get a glimpse of their heritage and learn about a different facet of Chris Webber, basketball player, philanthropist, and collector of African American history. Click here to learn more...
 Great American Artists: Roots, Branches, and Seeds - Part I
Through April 29
This yearlong exhibition features the works of a consortium of Detroit artists in a three-part series. During the past several years, each artist has collaborated to complete a portrait of a group member and to document each other’s studio processes, techniques and themes. This cooperative provides the group a means of documenting and preserving each artist’s image and their careers. In declaring themselves Great American Artists, they have set the bar high. The first installation features the art of Richard Lewis, Sabrina Nelson, and Gregory Johnson, and will be on exhibit January 12 - April 29, 2012. Click here to learn more...
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