Prestigious award comes with a $100,000 prize plus short film and monograph

Tyree Guyton, the internationally celebrated painter and visionary placemaker, is now the 18th Kresge Eminent Artist. The annual $100,000 prize is widely hailed as the Detroit cultural community’s most prestigious award.

Guyton, who is 70, is the founder of the Heidelberg Project (HP), an outdoor public arts installation anchoring the McDougall-Hunt neighborhood on the city’s east side. Launched in 1986, the Heidelberg Project is considered Detroit’s earliest, and at times its most controversial, outdoor neighborhood art space. The project has attracted international acclaim for the way Guyton slowly transformed swaths of vacant lots and abandoned homes into his personal canvas and a visual wonderland, attracting thousands of camera-toting tourists and art students annually.

The Heidelberg Project is essentially an open-air gallery of discarded everyday items: shoes, dolls, stuffed animals, televisions, car hoods and clocks, surrounded by an array of abstract faces, bright polka dots and politically edgy messages, all painted by Guyton.

Like the 17 metro Detroiters who precede him, Guyton receives the honor for lifetime artistic achievement and contributions to the region’s cultural footprint. He is the third Kresge Eminent Artist to have previously won a Kresge Artist Fellowship, which he earned in 2009 during the inaugural year of the awards.

Guyton’s artwork is featured in the permanent collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, the University of Michigan Museum of Art and the Studio Museum of Harlem. In 2012, Guyton spent a year as an artist-in-residence in Basel, Switzerland, at the invitation of the Laurenz-Haus Foundation. He’s traveled to 14 countries as a guest artist and lecturer.

“Surreal,” is how Guyton describes the moment he learned about his Eminent Artist selection. “I felt like Moses,” he said. “All I heard clearly was, ‘eminent’ and ‘you’ve been chosen.’ I got real quiet. I couldn’t believe what she [Kresge Arts in Detroit Director Katie McGowan] was telling me. It still feels crazy, after all this time. Me, chosen.”

“Tyree Guyton exemplifies the spirit of a city whose Latin motto – ‘Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus’ – translates to ‘We hope for better things; it shall arise from the ashes,’” said Rip Rapson, president and CEO of The Kresge Foundation. “In a 1980s Detroit widely and unjustly disparaged as nothing more than a locus of decline and crime, Guyton garnered international headlines by controversially turning vacant houses into canvases and empty lots into frames for striking assemblages of urban detritus transformed into a kind of gritty beauty.

“For more than four decades, on the streets of his neighborhood and on gallery walls, Guyton has continued to exemplify ground truth and soaring aspirations, the blues and the abstractions, that are integral to so much of the great art for which this city is known,” Rapson said.

Guyton joins a class of esteemed past Eminent Artist winners: visual artists Charles McGee, Ruth Adler Schnee, Marie Woo, Shirley Woodson, Olayami Dabls and Nora Chapa Mendoza; musicians Marion Hayden, Patricia Terry-Ross, David DiChiera, Marcus Belgrave and Wendell Harrison; authors Bill Harris, Naomi Long Madgett, Gloria House, and Melba Joyce Boyd; and photographers Leni Sinclair and Bill Rauhasuer.

As the 2026 Kresge Eminent Artist, Guyton will receive a $100,000 cash prize. This spring, Kresge Arts in Detroit will debut a short film about Guyton’s life and art, and in the fall, The Kresge Foundation will publish a monograph, available at no cost while supplies last and in perpetuity for download online. To preorder a printed copy of the book, kresge.org/news-views/kresge-eminent-artists/.

Overcoming obstacles

At times, Guyton’s assemblages have been dismissed as glorified junk by skeptics along Heidelberg Street and city leaders.

In the late 1990s, portions of the installation were destroyed by City of Detroit-mandated demolitions. Devastation visited again when a dozen unsolved arson fires occurred between October 2013 and December 2014.

The combined battles with the City of Detroit and the rash of fires turned many of the displays on vacant lots and several of the Heidelberg Project’s early and most recognizable “housescapes” to rubble.

The “housescapes” destroyed include: the Obstruction of Justice House, Taxi House, Party Animal House, Penny House, Clock House, House of Soul, You House, and War House. Today, only two of the campus’ original art houses remain, the Numbers House and the Dotty-Wotty.

“I’ve had to cry a lot of tears over the years,” Guyton explained.

Using art to change the community

Guyton said the timing of the award — 2026 marks the Heidelberg Project’s 40th anniversary — and the surprise recognition are almost more meaningful than the size of the prize. “As an artist, you want people to recognize you,” he said. “But you get to a point, especially someone like me, with all the criticism, the trials, tribulations, the fires … you stop caring. You stop thinking about any kind of validation. You keep moving, for yourself.”

For Guyton, the Heidelberg Project has always been deeply personal, starting with the fact that it takes shape along several blocks of the street that he and three generations of his family called home. The Dotty-Wotty, Guyton’s childhood home, is a centerpiece of the art spectacle that he still prefers to define as “a beautiful rebuttal” to Detroit’s decades-long battle against blight and urban abandonment. “This was always a message of love from me to the city.”

Members of the 2026 Kresge Eminent Artist selection panel said Guyton emerged as the top choice in a tough process primarily because of the way he has used his art to change the community. By doing so over the course of four decades, they said, Guyton exemplifies the award’s purpose.

“There were a lot of people on the list who have made a significant artistic impact,” explained Lauren Hood, founding director of the Institute for AfroUrbanism and an assistant professor of urban planning at the University of Michigan. “But I think the reason Tyree ended up a little ahead is that his influence extends beyond just the art world.”

The panel was impressed by examples of a practice many view as “true Detroit,’’ she said. “Artists in Detroit have this way about them, and we saw it as we went through the list; visual artists who mentored other visual artists; musicians who’ve mentored other musicians — then you come to Tyree, and see someone using his art to influence the actual city.”

Hood said the award’s potential impact on Guyton’s future contributions was also a factor. “For some people, the award can seem like a bow on a life well-lived; story over,” she said. “But we felt like Tyree still has room to grow; this award could exponentially influence what comes next for him.”

Panelist Haleem Stringz said celebrating Guyton’s legacy provides a vital footnote to Detroit’s evolving reputation as a “sudden” hub for young artists. “Detroit has so much going on creatively right now, it’s easy to be out of touch with the fact that art here is not new,’’ said Stringz, a dancer, choreographer, educator and 2010 Kresge Arts Fellow. “One of the best things about this award is that it refuses to let that history be forgotten. Artists like Tyree, they’re the ones who paved the way for what’s happening today,” he said. “It’s a moment of real respect, a chance to shine some light where it’s due.”

Some of Guyton’s other top honors include: the Award for Artistic Excellence by the City of Detroit in 2007, the Spirit of Detroit Award in 1989, and the Michiganian of the Year Award in 1991.

“Congratulations to Tyree Guyton on his selection as the 2026 Kresge Eminent Artist,” said Don Tuski, President of the College for Creative Studies (CCS). “He is an exceptional Detroiter who has spent decades proving that art can be a catalyst for social change. His work continues to inspire our local and global artistic communities.”

The renewed recognition comes as the Heidelberg Project is being reimagined as “an art environment” that will eventually showcase the artwork and creativity of a new generation of Detroit artists in spaces along Heidelberg and Elba streets between Ellery and Mt Elliott. Since 2016, Guyton has been carefully making room for the organization’s transformation into what its new director, Andy Sturm, calls ‘Detroit’s Heidelberg Project,’ the next phase of development. The focus moving forward is on how the Heidelberg Project will thrive in its next 40 years with new spaces and new voices. It includes improvements to the infrastructure of the art environment that will better support visitors and the surrounding community. Next steps include renovating the Numbers House, one of two remaining HP art houses, into a welcome center and community space. Other improvements are also being planned, including turning Guyton’s childhood home, the Dotty Wotty House, into the HP History House, the project’s first official archival space.

Sturm views Guyton’s latest big moment as pivotal for the project’s future as well. “I think it’s really powerful that it happens as the Heidelberg Project turns 40,” he said. “I really hope the award makes people realize that A) we’re still here, B) it’s a special and sacred place in the city created by Tyree and C) it’s going to need significant support to be around another 40 years.”

In addition to the 2026 Kresge Eminent Artist Award, Guyton’s artwork continues to find support and new audiences beyond Detroit. His creations are the focus of two recent solo exhibitions, including Heidelbergology: Is it Art Now? at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. That exhibition, the largest of Guyton’s career, features 10 massive works from the project alongside more than 50 works from Guyton’s studio practice, including never-before-seen sculptures, paintings and archival sketches. The exhibition, which closes February 15, marks the first time large, site-specific Guyton sculptures have been publicly shared indoors.

The Ella Sharp Museum, in Jackson, Michigan, recently closed a smaller, yearlong exhibition of Guyton’s work. Entitled 40 Years in the Hood: Detroit’s Heidelberg Project, the show was personally curated by Guyton and the project’s former executive director, Jenenne Whitfield, who is also Guyton’s wife.

Guyton and Whitfield, who have worked side by side for the past 33 years, want the exhibition to travel to other cities. “Why not the world?” asked Guyton. “This has been a 40-year journey with a lot to say and show about the power of art in general, not just in Detroit.”

Guyton’s work is currently included in a new exhibition at the Elaine L. Jacob Gallery through March 7. Titled Borders of Figuration: Painting & Drawing from the University Art collection at Wayne State University, the exhibition was curated by Christopher Stackhouse.

Roots Rewarded

The story that Tyree Guyton has always told about his lifelong love of art begins at age 9 in the 3600 block of Heidelberg Street — in the house that would become the center of Detroit’s Heidelberg Project. Tyree’s grandfather, Sam Mackey, connected the first major dots between Guyton and creativity.

“He gave me a paintbrush,” Guyton recalled of Grandpa Mackey, who was a commercial sign painter. “It was like magic. It was like bells and whistles went off in my head. My hand was burning.”

Looking back, Guyton, born the third of 10 children, said that his grandfather’s gesture was foundational. “I knew then that I was put here to be an artist.”

Growing up, Guyton attended Detroit’s Ralph J. Bunche Elementary and Miller Junior High School. Yet by the 8th grade, Guyton was clear about another fact of his life: “I hated school.” He attended Northern and Martin Luther King Jr. high schools, but in 1972, he dropped out to enlist in the U.S. Army.

A year later, Guyton was back in Detroit. He completed a GED and started supporting himself for much of the late 1970s and into the ’80s, working on the assembly line at Chrysler and Ford Motor Company. He later became a Detroit firefighter, but he quit when his childhood calling finally became too loud to ignore. Guyton studied art at the College for Creative Studies and Marygrove College but never completed a degree. In 2009, CCS awarded Guyton an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts. The passion that began with his grandpa deepened as he began studying privately with the legendary Detroit painter, sculptor and arts educator Charles McGee, the first recipient of the Kresge Eminent Artist Award in 2008.

Under McGee, Guyton learned to let his art “speak.” What was also on his mind and disturbing him daily was Detroit’s decline and the growing blight on the block that had been home to his family since 1947. “His McDougall-Hunt neighborhood was one of many once-thriving Black communities that were undermined by the federal policy of redlining and suffered further hardship in the aftermath of Detroit’s 1967 uprising.”

As Guyton tells it, on a sunny day in April of 1986, he looked out onto the block and heard a whisper. “The street,” he said, “was talking to me, telling me what it wanted to become. It was asking for beauty.”

Guyton’s initial response was simply picking up the trash, occasionally collecting what he found. Then, just as his grandfather taught him, he picked up a paintbrush and went to work in a new way, splattering bright polka dots onto abandoned properties. Soon came dolls, stuffed animals and clocks, which he painted too, and began nailing to trees with encouragement and help from his grandfather. At various points throughout the project history, Guyton and his late grandfather covered stretches of Heidelberg Street with shoes and other found objects.

“Art is my medicine; it’s how I make sense, make meaning of the world around me,” he said. “That day, I felt like the street, the city, needed my medicine. I started and I never let anything stop me. I still believe art is the answer.”

Guyton calls the Kresge Eminent Artist award an exclamation point on his lifelong belief. “If you’re doing what you’re put on this earth to do, no matter what happens, who criticizes you, keep going,” he said. “Eventually, good things find you and renew you.”

A select panel of metro Detroit interdisciplinary artists, art educators and arts professionals chose Guyton for the 2026 award:

• Carlos Diaz: Photographer, Educator, Curator; Emeritus Professor, College for Creative Studies; 2024 Guggenheim Fellow
• Lauren Hood: Founder/Director, Institute for AfroUrbanism; Assistant Professor of Practice, Urban Planning, University of Michigan
• Suma Karaman Rosen: Executive Director, InsideOut Literary Arts; McGregor Fund Miller Fellow; Alum, National Arts Strategies Chief Executive Program
• Mandisa Smith: Founder, AKOMA Art House & Dye Garden and Detroit Sistas Sew; Director, Hope for Flowers Artisan Studio; Fiber Artist
• Haleem Stringz: Dancer, Choreographer, Educator, Filmmaker; Founder, Hardcore Detroit; Board member, Screen Dance International; NBA dancer, Detroit Pistons; 2010 Kresge Artist Fellow

Kresge Arts in Detroit is funded by The Kresge Foundation and administered by the College for Creative Studies. The goals of Kresge Arts in Detroit are to enrich the quality of life for metro Detroiters by helping artists provide a broad spectrum of cultural experiences; celebrate and reflect the richness and diversity of our community in all its aspects; heighten the profile of arts and artists in our community; and strengthen the artistic careers of local artists. Since 2008, Kresge Arts in Detroit has awarded over $9 million through 18 Kresge Eminent Artist Awards, 317 Kresge Artist Fellowships, and 72 Gilda Awards.