Monroe artist among first annual City of Detroit arts and culture honorees

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan commemorated International Artist Day this week with an announcement of the inaugural Detroit ACE Honors, which salute achievement by artists and arts patrons who have contributed more than 25 years of service to the Detroit arts and culture scene.

Monroe artist Robert S. Duncanson made the list.

A ceremony, to be held in January, will present each honoree with a Detroit ACE medal of excellence. The event will also unveil the members of the Detroit Council of the Arts, who will choose recipients in subsequent years.

The first Detroit ACE Medal recipients, announced Monday, are:

• Robert S. Duncanson, a prolific painter known for sweeping, large-scale landscapes. He established a studio in Detroit in 1849, where he would become the most accomplished African American painter of the 1850s and 1860s. A collection of Duncanson’s work hangs in the Detroit Institute of Arts. He is considered to be the first African American artist to gain international recognition and has been proclaimed by American media as “the best landscape painter in the West.” Duncanson came to Monroe at age 7. He and his four brothers apprenticed in the family trades of house painting and carpentry. He was later a painter and glazer and eventually became a portrait painter. At age 19, he left Monroe to start his fine arts career. He became one of the few African American landscape artists of the 1800s to achieve international recognition. His 1859 painting, “Landscape with Rainbow,” was displayed at President Joe Biden’s 2021 inaugural luncheon. Duncanson is buried in Monroe’s Woodland Cemetery.
• Elizabeth (Betty) Brooks, board member of the Detroit Historical Society, Motown Museum, Detroit Jazz Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History and the Michigan Opera Theatre. Brooks chaired the 150th anniversary celebration for the Detroit Public Library and the second annual Eastern Market Harvest Celebration, and is an appointed member of the Board of Police Commissioners for the City of Detroit.
• David DiChiera, founder of Michigan Opera Theatre and former president of Opera America. The late DiChiera was the critically acclaimed composer of “Four Sonnets” (premiered at the Kennedy Center) and “Cyrano” (premiered at the Detroit Opera House, later presented by the Opera Company of Philadelphia and the Florida Grand Opera). 
• LeRoy Foster, fine portrait painter and muralist known for public commissions, including “The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass” for the Frederick Douglass Branch of the Detroit Public Library, “Kaleidoscope” for the lobby of Southwest Detroit Hospital and “Renaissance City” for the old Cass Technical High School Building. Foster was a graduate of Cass Tech and the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts School (now the College of Creative Studies).
• Tyree Guyton, non-expressionist artist, 2009 Kresge Artist Fellow and creator of the internationally renowned Heidelberg Project. Guyton studied at the College for Creative Studies and was awarded an honorary doctorate of fine art. He has been featured at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
• Vera Heidelberg, co-chair of the first Classical Roots Celebration, an annual concert sponsored by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra recognizing African American contributions to classical music. Heidelberg is a graduate of the Detroit Institute of Technology and Wayne State University. 
• Artis Lane, portrait artist and sculptor known for works featuring President John F. Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Henry Kissinger, Barbara Bush, Rosa Parks, Michael Jordan and Aretha Franklin. 
• Charles McGee, prolific painter and sculptor with work featured at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, the Brooklyn Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art. McGee, who died in February, was founder of the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit and the first Kresge Eminent Artist in 2008. 
• Carlos Nielbock, master architectural ornamental metal and design artist, engineer and craftsman, whose work was featured in the Fox Theater restoration. Inventor of the Detroit Windmill, the first and only fully upcycled, low-level wind turbine. 
• Dudley Randall, the City of Detroit’s first poet laureate. Randall was founder of Broadside Press and was once called “the Father of the Black Poetry Movement” by Black Enterprise Magazine. 
• Gretchen Valade, philanthropist and leading patron of numerous Detroit arts institutions, including the Detroit Jazz Festival and Wayne State University’s jazz program. 
• Marilyn Wheaton, longtime director of the City of Detroit’s Cultural Affairs Department, Concerned Citizens for the Arts in Michigan and the Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum on the Saginaw Valley State University campus. 
• Debra White-Hunt, co-founder and artistic director of the Detroit-Windsor Dance Academy. White-Hunt has choreographed more than 50 ballets and directed more than 100 dance concerts. 
• Shirley Woodson, a painter known for large-scale figurative work featured in the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.