Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry Murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts

The Rivera Courtyard

In 1932, noted Mexican painter and muralist Diego Rivera was commissioned by the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) to paint twenty-seven murals including the massive north and south walls of the Roman Baroque Marble courtyard. The original space was filled wih fountains, potted plants, and austere marble pillars. The first DIA director William Valentiner wanted to fill the space with colorful murals representing Detroit's industrial miracle and the workforce that gave life to the assembly line.

When two out of five Detroit autoworkers were out of work during the Great Depression, raising money for public art was a hard sell. Patrons of the arts Edsel Ford, president of the Ford Motor Company, and his wife Eleanor, underwrote the project with $20,000 of their own money to pay Rivera his commission. It was DIA Director William Valentiner, who brought Diego Rivera to the attention of Mr. and Mrs. Edsel Ford.

Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo

Rivera and his new wife Frida Kahlo arrived in Detroit on April 21, 1932. Rivera spent three months touring the Rouge Plant, the Parke-Davis plant, and Downriver industry including the chemical plants in Wyandotte. He prepared sketches of the entire assembly line process with American Labor toiling at work. FoMoCo's official Rouge Plant photographer aided Rivera in his research, guiding the artist through the company's extensive photographic archive.

Using the Renaissance technique called frescoe, it took expertise and teamwork to grind pigment and paint the wet plaster before it dried. Rivera and his skilled assistants usually began working at noon and ended fifteen hours later, but they finished the twenty-seven panels in eight busy months. Rivera lost one hundred pounds in the process.

North Wall of Rivera Court

The large north wall fresco depicts the manufacturing process of Ford's famous V-8 engine from the steel-making blast furnances in the background to the labyrinth of conveyer belts laden with engine parts awaiting assembly. In the lower right section of the mural, Edsel Ford and Director William Valentiner are overlooking the scene. Rivera followed the fresco tradition of painting the patron(s) somewhere in the work of art.

South Wall of Rivera Court

Likewise, the south wall shows the manufacturing of the exterior parts of the automobile. Again, Edsel Ford and Director Valentiner appear on the right side of the fresco standing in front of a chalk board signifying that Edsel was a car designer and an artist in his own right. Laid out before him on a drafting table are the tools of his trade. Ford and Valentiner gaze into the gallery from the painting.

At the unveiling of the mural, Edsel Ford invited members of Detroit's religious community to comment on the mural. Catholic and Episcopalian clerics condemned the murals as blasphemous, mainly over one panel that was a modern take on traditional Christian images of the Holy Family and the nativity. They considered that panel a parody rather than an homage and demanded the mural be destroyed.

The conservative Detroit News weighed in and called the murals "vulgar" and "un-American", but Ford and Valentiner refused to destroy the epic work of mural art. Some historians suggest that the controversy may have been engineered by Edsel Ford to garner free publicity from the local media.

The first Sunday the Detroit Industry murals were on public exhibit, the bad publicity prompted 10,000 Detroiters to visit the mural to see for themselves. The people of Detroit were in awe of this masterpiece that celebrated the working man. On the strength of the public's response, the Detroit City Council increased the DIA's yearly budget.

In the early 1950s, United States Senator Joseph McCarthy was conducting anti-American hearings in Washington D.C.. Since the 1930s, Diego Rivera had gained notoriety for his Marxist philosophy, prompting the DIA to place a disclaimer at the entrance to the Rivera Courtyard stating that Rivera's personal politics did not take away from one of the crowning achievements of twentieth-century art. The notice defended the artistic merits of the murals while criticizing Rivera's politics.

For the one-hundredth birthday of Diego Rivera during February of 1986, the DIA held a celebration of his work. Of Edsel and Eleanor Ford's four children, only their daughter Josephine bothered to attend, and of their eleven grandchildren, only Benson Ford's daughter Lynn attended.

The murals were Edsel's gift to the city of Detroit, and they form what is considered one of the finest examples of industrial art in the world, worthy of both its creator and his patron. On April 23, 2014, the Detroit Industry murals were designated a National Historic Landmark.

Panoramic View of Detroit Industry Murals in Rivera Courtyard

World Traveler George F. Pierrot

Detroiters who grew up watching television in the 1950s and 1960s are no doubt familiar with George F. Pierrot, the gravelly-voiced, rotund host of the World Adventure Series on WXYZ (channel seven) which debuted in 1948 and George Pierrot Presents on WWJ-TV (channel four) which debuted in 1953. Pierrot holds the distinction as the only Detroit television personality to host shows on two local stations concurently. Pierrot instilled the desire to travel in many of his younger viewers.

From the point of view of the audience, Pierrot's job seemed easy enough. He introduced his guest travelers who showed and narrated their 16 mm films of the Western United States and exotic world location with speakers like Don Cooper, Stan Midgley, Dennis Glen Cooper, and Lowell Thomas. Behind the scenes, Pierrot booked the speakers, viewed and edited their films for content, and handled all negotiations and background arrangements.

"I demand a good reporting job," Pierrot said. "Sure, I want good films, but the speaker must have his facts straight. Viewers want indepth lectures and documentaries on what it is like in different countries." Like Pierrot himself, all of the commentators on his shows belonged to the Circumnavigator's Club whose headquarters was in New York City. Pierrot's shows were sponsored by Edward Brink of The Mutual of Omaha insurance company.

World traveler, author, and raconteur, Pierrot was born in Chicago on January 11, 1898, but his family moved to Seattle where his father practiced medicine and introduced his son to globetrotting. George studied journalism at the University of Washington before becoming the editor of the Washington Daily, but he left to write for a national magazine based in Detroit called The American Boy in the early 1920s. Pierrot became a regular luncheon and banquet speaker at service organizations and non-profits all over the city making him a much sought-after personality in Detroit.

When The American Boy went out of business in 1934, Pierrot pitched the idea of a weekly travelogue program to the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) to boost the museum's poor attendance during the Great Depression. In those days, world traveling was a much bigger deal than it is now. Travel was impossible for the average person. Pierrot became the director of the World Adventure Series. For a yearly membership fee of one dollar or a charge of ten cents per lecture, the public could attend the Sunday afternoon travelogues. The programs were a big hit and set Pierrot up with his life's work. The DIA series ran in the Longfellow Auditorium until 1979.

With the start of World War II in Europe, Pierrot complained in October 1939 that "It's hard enough under normal circumstances to assemble world celebrities for lecture programs, but now the war is disrupting every travelogue series in the country. However, we do have the war to thank for our first feature of the season. A motion picture newsman returning from Poland will show two of his films this Sunday. 'Poland Under Fire' at 3:30 pm and the 'Defense of Poland' at 8:30 pm."

The DIA suspended The World Adventure Series in October of 1942 because of gas rationing and the curtailment of public transit on Sundays when the programs were held. Gas stations were closed and drivers were asked to stay home in an effort to save gas for the war effort. Forty-five percent of the program's audience came from the suburbs, so the museum shut the program down. The DIA resumed its Sunday World Adventure Series the following year when the ban on Sunday travel was eased. Rather than travelogues, documentary films from the battlefronts where Americans were fighting and dying dominated the lecture program until the war ended. These programs were well-attended. There was no commercial television in those days, so Detroiters flocked to the DIA to see the latest film footage from the front lines.

One-millionth USO serviceman winning a day on the town. Saturday, April 24,1943.

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Pierrot did his part for the war effort by becoming the director of the Detroit Branch of the United Service Organization (USO) in 1942. He ran one of the most extensive and successful programs in the country. Activities for American soldiers and sailors included weekly dance parties and an entertainment unit that showed free motion pictures with special features like Movietone News and cartoons. Pierrot reported to the Defense Department that the Detroit USO entertained 40,000 G.I.s a month.

Three years after the war ended, Pierrot took his World Adventure Series to the new medium of television. For twenty-eight years from 1948 until 1976, he brought the world of travel to Detroiters in their living rooms. In 1979, the DIA's World Adventure Series went dark after forty-two years.

Pierrot led the way for television travelogue hosts like Rick Steves and Anthony Bourdain. In addition to travel, George was known for his love of food, drink (Strohs), and off-color limericks. On February 16, 1980, George F. Pierrot suffered a heart attack at his Indian Village home and died forty-five minutes later at Henry Ford Hospital. He is buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Wayne County.

World Adventure Series with George Pierrot circa 1960 

Michigan Outdoors with Mort Neff