Michigan's central role in the Modernist movement leaves lasting impacts

2018-09-07T13:51:00-04:00

If Michigan isn’t the first place that comes to mind when considering [the Modern era] — unlike, say, Germany or France in the 1920s — it should be. The presence of Ford in the city and Booth in the country was enough to make Michigan ground zero for the Modernist experiment [...] making the state home to perhaps the most diverse and best-preserved collection of early Modernist experiments in the world.

A look at Michigan's history in the Modernist movement and the story it tells for our future. M.H. Miller traces three main convergences in the state: Henry Ford's first Model T factory, the Cranbrook school's presence, and numerous influential architects most notably Albert Kahn and Minoru Yamasaki. While this all leaves Michigan with several noteworthy sites, Detroit and surrounding areas are also cautionary markers of modernism's relentless pursuit of "progress" for future generations.

The Last Pedestrians: Albert Kahn, Edsel Ford, Diego Rivera

2012-04-10T17:12:00-04:00

The story of the automobile — like the story of the city of Detroit — is a tale of unwitting eternal returns. At every turn the inventors of modern life — of its machines, its aspirations — seemed unable or unwilling to grasp the meaning of what they were in the process of creating and unleashing, and what they were thus undoing and destroying.

On Places, historian Jerry Herron traces the intersecting lives of architect Albert Kahn, industrialist Edsel Ford, and artist Diego Rivera and examines their roles in shaping the mythology of Detroit as an industrial powerhouse.

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Michigan's central role in the Modernist movement leaves lasting impacts

The Last Pedestrians: Albert Kahn, Edsel Ford, Diego Rivera