Picture one of the great art museums in America, its white marble Beaux-Arts hall opened in 1927. The Detroit Institute of Arts holds a collection ranging from ancient Egypt to modern masters, but its beating heart is the Rivera Court, where in 1932 and 1933 the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera painted the Detroit Industry frescoes, twenty-seven panels portraying the workers, machines, and assembly lines of the Ford Rouge plant. Rivera considered them his finest work.
Funded by Edsel Ford during the depths of the Depression, the murals were attacked by some as communist and irreligious, but the Fords defended them, and they survive untouched. During Detroit's 2013 bankruptcy, the museum's masterpieces were nearly sold to pay city debts until a grand bargain of foundations and donors saved them. Step into the Rivera Court and stand among the four great walls of laboring figures and roaring machinery, an entire industrial city rendered in plaster and pigment.