From July 2010 to July 2016, Alonso Delarte was Detroit Event Photography Examiner for Examiner.com.
Whitdel Arts was originally located in the Whitdel Apartments, with free rent from Southwest Solutions and most of the utilities also paid by Southwest Solutions.
April 13, 2016 9:02 PM MST
Photographers Doug Coombe and Trever Long horse around at Whitdel Arts. Photo by Alonso del Arte.
Evicted from Whitdel Apartments, Whitdel Arts will go forward with the two exhibits originally planned for this Friday, April 15, 2016, at 7:00 p.m., just that at different locations. The Whitdel Arts 2016 Members' Show will now take place at Inner State Gallery at the originally scheduled date and time, while Julia Maiuri's solo show that would have taken place in the Emerging Artists space will now take place at Corktown Studios, on the originally scheduled date but starting at 6:00 p.m. Both Inner State Gallery and Corktown Studios are privately owned.
But Whitdel Arts is not privately owned. In fact, neither Whitdel Arts nor the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit (CAID, which Whitdel was initially a division of) have ever paid rent to Southwest Solutions. Rent for an 1,800 square foot space in Detroit can easily run in excess of $1,000 a month.
In return for this generosity, Whitdel Arts was supposed to fulfill some sort of community mission. Whitdel does quote an excerpt from a letter from Steven Gabrys of Southwest Solutions: "It has become too difficult to determine what is going on with the art space and the community mission is being lost." But Whitdel does not quote what that community mission is supposed to be.
However, Whitdel's page on Idealist.org states that Whitdel "showcases the work of local and international established and emerging artists." Local or international, the artists are almost always white. Since starting in 2009 or 2010 and going up to 2013, Whitdel had exhibited just two black artists. In 2014, Carl Wilson became the first black man to ever exhibit at Whitdel. Austen Brantley became the second black man to exhibit at Whitdel in 2015, and there hasn't been a third.
Only one Mexican American artist, Kia Ixchel Arriaga, has ever exhibited at Whitdel, and that was back in 2013.
CORRECTION: Whitdel Arts might have exhibited lots of Mexican American artists prior to 2011, and a few in late 2014. We're supposed to be impressed by that?
No Mexican artists have exhibited at Whitdel, in sharp contrast to Inner State Gallery. Whitdel could dispute these numbers, but with what few upward revisions there may be to be had, the numbers would still be rather anemic. A perusal of Examiner.com's Whitdel Arts topic page will show white artists almost exclusively. In the context of Whitdel's definite preference for white artists, Carl Swanson's blunder with his Vulture article of 2015 is almost understandable and forgivable.
An informal and unscientific survey last month of talented, young, black and Latino artists in the neighborhood revealed that almost all of them were unaware of Whitdel Arts being in the neighborhood. Those who did know about Whitdel regarded it as unlikely that they could ever exhibit at Whitdel regardless of the quality of their work, as they lack the credentials that young white artists, even those of little skill, are likely to have acquired almost automatically.
Just as important as having diversity in artists exhibited is having diversity in people who come to the gallery. Mostly only white people from the suburbs come to Whitdel's opening receptions. The gallery assistants regard southwest Detroit as being extremely dangerous, and much prefer that no one at all come to gallery hours.
Whitdel Arts disrespected the community, and was here strictly only for the free rent. Southwest Solutions is not saying much at this point, but there have been hints that a community mission in the arts is still regarded as essential, though in a manner that shows respect and gratitude to the community. "We can't stop, we won't stop," Whitdel declared in their Facebook page. But as far as the community is concerned, at least they have stopped taking up space in the neighborhood.
Addendum, April 20, 2016: New Detroit Realty has a listing for a 6,500-square foot space downtown going for $10 per square foot per month, which seems to be a fairly common price. Maybe this can be scaled down to 1,800 square feet, for which rent would be $18,000 a month and run $216,000 per year (which is still substantially greater than free rent).
If one can pay that kind of rent for an art gallery, one doesn't have to explain one's exhibition choices to anyone. And if an organization can afford to give an art gallery that kind of rent for free, that organization is at the very least owed some gratitude.
COMMENTARY. The backlash to this article proved my point. For instance, white gallery owner Daniel Sperry charged that my editor at Examiner.com didn't care about "accuracy." Apparently I had failed to mention that Whitdel Arts was very welcoming to gays. But just white gays, right? As so often happens to me, I didn't think of the perfect comeback until much later.
Sperry owns What Pipeline with Alivia Zivich. What Pipeline is just a few blocks away from Whitdel Arts. But in some ways, the two galleries are extremely different. What Pipeline shows British and German artists almost exclusively. I have every right to criticize them for not bringing artists from Africa or Latin America, and they have every right not to care, because they pay their own rent and utilities at What Pipeline. They don't depend on the generosity of a nonprofit organization.
Others pointed out that Whitdel Arts Director JenClare Gawaran is Asian. At least the number of Asian artists who have exhibited at Whitdel is roughly proportional to the number of Asians in the city. Remember also that a black artist was added to the Whitdel board in 2014 only after pressure from Southwest Solutions.
Some people felt very smart pointing out that Whitdel showed artists from around the country and "the submission form didn't have an ethnicity checkbox." That's just an excuse. These days, you can get a good idea of someone's ethnicity just by Googling them (try it with Haylee Ebersole, for example).
Juries and entry fees are just two of the mechanisms by which systemic racism is perpetuated by inertia. If you don't do anything pro-active to counteract the inertia, then the systemic racism just keeps going.
I can admit when I'm wrong. I did have factual mistakes in the article. But I also hedged, predicting whatever upward revisions are to be had, they would be anemic. However, it seems that in Whitdel's unrecorded history (prior to 2011), lots of Mexican American artists exhibited at Whitdel. When Gawaran took over and better records were kept, the number of Latino artists exhibited plummeted dramatically.
Now in its nomadic era, the Whitdel Arts board claims sole ownership of the name "Whitdel Arts." That's fine, they can have it. If the Whitdel Apartments space is once again used for art, it should be under a new name anyway, to signal a break from the inertial systemic racism of Whitdel Arts.
The Whitdel Arts board members soldier on, with an adolescent sense of a holy mission. It is important that potential future benefactors are aware of the Whitdel Arts history with Southwest Solutions.
COMMENTARY. As 2016 started out, the Whitdel Arts board felt invincible. The Crotch: Contested Territory exhibit demonstrated they could exhibit whatever they wanted with no regard for the community's feelings.
Crotch closed as scheduled and Just My Type opened. But by this point, Southwest Solutions had run out of patience for complaints about Whitdel Arts. Saying that the "community mission is being lost," Steven Gabrys of Southwest Solutions started the process to evict Whitdel Arts out of the Whitdel Apartments.
The Whitdel Arts board started a clever campaign of deception, painting Southwest Solutions as a capricious, big, evil corporation that had suddenly decided to end the little art gallery's "lease agreement," and asking people to sound off to Southwest Solutions in defense of Whitdel Arts.
And lots of people started speaking up as Southwest Solutions stayed silent. But would those people be as supportive of Whitdel Arts if they had a fuller picture of the situation? Hence my moral obligation to write this article.