Detroit Industry Murals

My name is Benjamin Coleman. I'm a curator of American art here at the Detroit Institute of Arts. We are standing in the middle of Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry Murals that he painted here in 1932 and 1933 that depict the economic vitality and life of the city of Detroit in the early 20th century. The two largest images on the north and south walls depict scenes from the Ford River Rouge factory, and we see workers assembling the engine block and then the chassis of the 1932 Ford V8 engine. What's curious about his depiction is that the artist doesn't show us many completed cars. In fact, you need a really eagle eye to find the one red coupe at the end of the moving assembly line. Instead, he focuses our attention and his energies on the strength and the skill of the workers that he met here in Detroit.

As you walk around Rivera court, there is a gray scale, a grisaille passage that we now call the predela panels that track the day and the life of a worker at the Ford Factory from the moment they clock in until they cross the road at the end of the day with their paycheck in hand.

The factory that the artist showed us was in many ways idealized. We know from historical records that the workforce at the Rouge plant was deeply segregated along racial lines. So where the artist shows us a racially integrated workforce, we know that he's using an optimistic gaze to show the world as he wanted it to be, rather than the world that he saw when he came to Detroit.

The mural painting process is such a complicated one, especially as practiced by Diego Rivera. So the way that he paints is very similar to the way artists 500 years before his time would have—that of fresco painting on a wet plaster wall. One of the reasons that an artist like Diego Rivera went through the trouble of using such a finicky medium as fresco painting is that it creates remarkably long-lived paint surface. So what we see on the walls of the museum today is very true to what the artist painted in the 1930s.

There is a vibrant tone and vibrant color palette that also speaks to the artist project of making his works and his murals accessible to a very wide audience. It was essential for the artist's personal belief and political beliefs that his work should not be cloistered in an ivory tower, but should be celebrated and understood by everyday people who walked in to visit the museum. Detroit Industry is one of the 12 Artworks to Inspire here at the DIA, and I hope that you'll continue to come visit and take inspiration from these murals as Detroiters have now for almost 100 years.