Virtual Exhibitions

The “Hip Hop Icons” exhibition features over 150 original objects related to the history of hip hop culture in America focused around the following themes: Pioneers, Icons, Groups, Women, Movies, and Detroit. The centerpiece of the exhibit are the Hip Hop Icons movie posters featuring some of the most significant and impactful films on hip hop culture. The following original movie posters will be on display in the exhibit: Wild Style, Beat Street, Breakin’, Krush Groove, House Party, Do the Right Thing, Juice, 8 Mile, Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, and Straight Outta Compton. The speaker series includes: Michigan based hip hop artists Supa Emcee and Miz Korona (8 Mile), hip hop pioneer MC Sha Rock (Beat Street), and Grammy Lifetime Awardee and Rock n Roll Hall of Fame inductee Professor Griff of Public Enemy (Do the Right Thing).

This virtual exhibition features twenty-five newly conserved Marshall Fredericks figure study drawings. These drawings were conserved by the Midwest Art Conservation Center with grant support from the Institute of Museums and Library Services.  You will see before and after photos of the drawings, and see how the conservation process brings new life to these important figure studies. Along with the drawings will be 360-degree views of several of Fredericks’s figure study sculptures for the viewer to participate by creating their own drawings.  There is also a virtual interactive 360-degree environment in which you can move about the exhibition, read labels, explore the drawings, view Marshalls drawing table complete with the actual tools he used, and learn about the art and science of conservation.

Mark Beltchenko is a Detroit-area sculptor that is highly skilled in multiple media.  Equally comfortable working in stone, steel, aluminum, wood and the non-ferrous metals, his work serves as a meditation on the good and bad in our current lives: the environment, political hypocrisy, positive growth, greed and human narcissism.  His imagery communicates messages in ways that are both primitive and profound; both sweeping and diminutive. ​

Our dependence on – and love for – wood cannot be overstated. It’s integral to our very existence in a range of ways, encompassing our man-made environments as well as both utilitarian and decorative items. The organic qualities of wood, our ability to manipulate its shape, its abundance, and its renewable potential are among the reasons wood permeates our culture – including the art world.

The seventy objects comprising Explorations in Wood are a small sample of the work held in the collection of Philadelphia’s Center for Art in Wood, gathered over a forty-year period.