Celebrating artistic excellence, mentoring and community involvement

Each year since 2008, The Kresge Foundation has named an Eminent Artist for excellence in the visual, performing or literary arts. Artists are selected for a lifetime of contributions to their art forms and to the cultural community of metropolitan Detroit.

The artists are honored in a number of ways, including the production of a video and a monograph about their life and career. All monographs remain available for free download; complimentary hard copies are available by request (while supplies last) by submitting this form.

Videos, stories, and links to download monographs celebrating each Kresge Eminent Artist are below:

2024: Nora Chapa Mendoza

2023: MELBA JOYCE BOYD

2022: Olayami Dabls

2021: Shirley Woodson

2020: Marie Woo

2019: Gloria House

2018: Wendell Harrison

2017: Patricia Terry-Ross

2016: Leni Sinclair

2015: Ruth Adler Schnee

2014: Bill Rauhauser

2013: DAvid dichiera

2012: Naomi Long Madgett

2011: Bill Harris

2009: Marcus Belgrave

2008: Charles McGee

2024: Nora Chapa Mendoza

Nora Chapa Mendoza is a painter, educator, activist and a long-time presence in the Detroit arts community. Mendoza’s work has enriched the cultural conversation through its celebration and exploration of the Chicano and Indigenous identities she holds. Her paintings — which range from abstraction to realism — reflect back the pain of injustice, the healing of human resolve, and the beauty of nature. Mendoza’s work is held in prestigious corporate and private collections and archives.

Order the monograph
Read about Chapa Mendoza’s selection
Comments from Kresge Arts in Detroit Director Christina deRoos

2023: Melba Joyce Boyd

Melba Joyce Boyd | 2023 Kresge Eminent Artist from Kresge Arts in Detroit on Vimeo.

Poet-scholar Melba Joyce Boyd has published 13 books, nine of which are collections of her own poetry, and has contributed more than 100 essays to anthologies, academic journals, cultural periodicals and newspapers in the United States and Europe. She worked closely with the pioneering Detroit poet-publishers Dudley Randall and Naomi Long Madgett, the latter the 2012 Kresge Eminent Artist. Among her many works, Boyd has written an award-winning biography of Randall and edited an award-winning anthology of his poetry.

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Download the monograph
Read about Boyd’s selection
2023 Kresge Eminent Artist Award Celebration
Watch Boyd reading her poetry at the Ferndale Public Library
Hear Boyd reading her poem “Wavelengths Inside Sunsets on Lake Huron”
Comments from Kresge Arts in Detroit Director Christina deRoos

2022: Olayami Dabls

Olayami Dabls | 2022 Kresge Eminent Artist from Kresge Arts in Detroit on Vimeo.

Olayami Dabls’ artistic achievement spans half a century. He is heralded for creating a mesmerizing and unapologetically African-centered cultural attraction in the city of Detroit, as well as thousands of original paintings, murals, installations, jewelry pieces and sculptures. He is also the first Kresge Artist Fellow (2011) to ascend to Kresge Eminent Artist.

Order the monograph
Download the monograph
Read about Dabls’ selection
Comments from Kresge Arts in Detroit Director Christina deRoos
Watch an interview with Dabls on what influences his unique style of art on PBS’ American Black Journal  
Listen to a Michigan Radio Stateside segment: One city block and thousands of beads
Watch a 2019 PBS NewsHour segment on the MBAD African Bead Museum

2021: Shirley Woodson

Shirley Woodson | 2021 Kresge Eminent Artist from Kresge Arts in Detroit on Vimeo.

Shirley Woodson is celebrated for an extraordinary six-decade career as a painter, institution builder and tireless arts educator and mentor. Her paintings, which blend bold colors with wildly expressive techniques, have been featured in many solo and group shows and are included in more than 23 permanent collections across the U.S. She has spent a lifetime working to broaden education and exhibition opportunities for generations of African American artists.

Download the monograph
Read about Shirley’s selection
Comments from Kresge Arts in Detroit Director Christina deRoos
Hear Shirley and her son Senghor Reid discuss the honor on WDET’s CultureShift
See an interview of Shirley on WDIV 

2020: Marie Woo

Marie Woo is only 70 years into her career as an arts educator, researcher, curator and preservationist. A technical master and a playful innovator, she has been called “the potter’s potter” for her ability to explore and expand traditional forms. Her vessels and large sculptural wall pieces appear in permanent collections around the globe, and her creations are noted by critics for intentionally and jarringly obliterating the line between form and function.

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Request a print copy of the monograph
Read about her selection
Detroit Public TV video profile of Marie Woo
October 2020 Exhibition “Marie Woo: Clay Quest” virtual opening video

2019: Gloria House

Gloria House’s remarkable journey in art and activism includes a five-decades-deep legacy as a poet, human and civil rights activist, organizer and educator. She has published four poetry collections under her chosen African name, Aneb Kgositsile. She has also been an activist since the student and civil rights movement of the 1960s and a professor at Wayne State University and the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

Download the monograph
Read about her selection

2018: Wendell Harrison

Wendell Harrison’s lifelong devotion to jazz and its traditions has led him to a 60-year career and international acclaim as a tenor saxophonist and clarinetist, bandleader, composer, publisher, publicist, producer, entrepreneur, educator and organizer.

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Read about his selection

2017: Patricia Terry-Ross

Terry-Ross spent 31 years at the helm of Cass Technical High School’s Harp and Vocal Ensemble; her former students include notables in classical instrumental music, opera and jazz. As a performer, she has contributed to numerous Motown sessions, has performed frequently with the Detroit Symphony, and has been the Michigan Opera Theatre’s principal harpist since 1976.

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Read about her selection

2016: Leni Sinclair

A recognized leader of the 1960s-70s countercultural movement in Detroit, which she amply documented through vivid and dramatic photography, Sinclair may be best known for capturing the raucous rock n’ roll scene of that era, including photographs of such rock legends as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, and jazz icons such as Miles Davis and Sun Ra.

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Read about her selection
Listen to Leni’s interview with WDET’s Ann Delisi: Part 1 | Part 2

2015: Ruth Adler Schnee

Schnee’s eye and imagination have brought colorful, abstract textiles and designs into personal, commercial and civic spaces. From living rooms, fitting rooms and hospital rooms to museums, showrooms and skyscrapers, her textiles appear in the most intimate and the most iconic settings. Schnee’s textiles are in the collections of The Henry Ford, the Art Institute of Chicago and Cranbrook Art Museum, among other institutions. (Hard copies of monograph are no longer available.)

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Read about her selection

2014: Bill Rauhauser

The dean of Detroit street photographers, Rauhauser has devoted more than 60 years to “being there” – being present and engaged on the city’s streets, inside the studio and inside the classroom. Rauhauser’s photos have appeared in numerous exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington and the Detroit Institute of Arts. Bill Rauhauser died in 2017 at age 98. (Hard copies no longer available.)

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Read about his selection
Statement from Kresge President Rip Rapson on the passing of Bill Rauhauser

2013: David DiChiera

By establishing an opera company in Detroit where there had been none, and then leading the renovation of an abandoned theater into a downtown showcase home for that company, impresario David DiChiera made a mark on Detroit’s cultural and physical landscape like few others. A composer himself, DiChiera believed that the future of opera hinged on diversity among its creators and audience, and that new works were essential to its continued relevance. David DiChiera died in 2018 at age 83.

Read about his selection
Download the monograph
Statement from Kresge President Rip Rapson on the passing of David DiChiera

2012: Naomi Long Madgett

An award-winning poet, editor and educator, Madgett nurtured aspiring poets through her teaching, annual poetry award and publishing company. Her poems have appeared in scores of anthologies and have been recognized with major awards including an American Book Award. She was named Poet Laureate of Detroit in 2001. Lotus Press, which she founded, has published many collections by emerging and established poets. Naomi Long Madgett died in 2020 at age 97.

Download the monograph
Read about her selection
Statement from Kresge President Rip Rapson on the passing of Naomi Long Madgett

2011: Bill Harris

A renowned literary artist and educator whose poetry, prose, and playwriting have won him acclaim from Detroit to New York City, Harris also has cultivated creative writing talent and literary expression among young people in Metropolitan Detroit as a professor of English at Wayne State University as a community educator.

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Read about his selection

2009: Marcus Belgrave

A master trumpet player who played alongside some of jazz music’s most famous figures, including Louis Armstrong. Belgrave enthralled audiences world-wide with his musical virtuosity and mentored scores of aspiring young musicians through his decades-long career. Marcus Belgrave died in 2015 at age 79. (Hard copies no longer available.)

Download the monograph
Read about his selection
Statement from Kresge President Rip Rapson on the passing of Marcus Belgrave

2008: Charles McGee

McGee’s distinguished career includes hundreds of exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad as well as contributions to Detroit’s cultural community as mentor, teacher and arts advocate. His paintings, assemblages and sculptures are in collections worldwide, and permanently installed at institutions such as the Detroit Institute of Arts and Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. Charles McGee died in 2021 at age 96. (Hard copies no longer available.)

Download the monograph
Read about McGee’s selection
Statement from Kresge President Rip Rapson on the passing of Charles McGee