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Duante Beddingfield | Detroit Free Press

Taking a novel approach with featured artists during COVID-19, Wayne State University’s art department has transitioned to non-traditional gallery exhibition venues for its current season. 

A billboard, at the corner of Woodward and Canfield will display a work by one artist, per month through next spring for “In the Air: Voices From Detroit and Beyond.” According to the exhibit website, the series features works by eight local and national artists “in response to the global pandemic and racial injustice.”

This month’s billboard, “Resting in Black,” was created by former Free Press deputy director of photo and video and locally based Kresge Artist Fellow Rashaun Rucker, whose drawings and prints make socially conscious commentary on the Black experience in America. The Detroit billboard features two black men, shoulder-to-shoulder, weighed down by worry.  

Although he has made Miami his home only since 2012, Jumaane N’Namdi is a committed stakeholder. “Everyone here who’s involved in the arts has a mission to promote the arts in South Florida,” says the director of N’Namdi Contemporary Miami, a gallery in Wynwood. Although the neighborhood is increasingly dominated by retail stores, he insists art cannot be just a commodity. Instead, he finds himself allied with the Pérez Art Museum Miami and other venues “to put the city on the map … for people to come to see art.”