It's Season in Detroit
In September 2025, Commissioner members from Miami and Detroit gathered in celebration of Season at Michigan Central—the contemporary art fair uplifting local and broader U.S.-based galleries alongside exciting artists living and working in the city. Founded and directed by Amani Olu, who years prior introduced Detroit Art Week, we found ourselves in the best of hands. This is not only because Olu also helped introduce Commissioner’s first-ever pop-up edition in Detroit, but because the city itself is a place where travelers are invited to learn, explore, and immerse themselves in the ecologies and self-determination that have shaped the city over time.
We’re proud to have been among the first in a constellation of supporters affirming Season’s mission of building a sustainable creative economy for artists, galleries, and cultural workers. Stepping into the unknown, launching a fair, and traveling for a program still finding its contours was rewarding in ways we could not have imagined. And that’s why we do this: to imagine anew, to build together.
“Through strategic programming, partnerships, and the Season Art Market Sustainability Framework — a five-year plan to grow Detroit’s art market — Season works to establish the city as a nationally recognized hub for contemporary art. The framework emphasizes equity, access, and measurable economic impact, ensuring that artists can build lasting careers, galleries can grow, and Detroiters share in the benefits of creative prosperity.
Season’s inaugural year proved the model: $135,000 raised, $65,000 in art sales, 25 local jobs created, and over $360,000 in total economic impact, with 100% of funds reinvested locally. Each edition of the fair brings together local and national galleries, collectors, curators, and cultural leaders to celebrate Detroit’s creative spirit while driving tangible market growth.
At its core, Season is more than an art fair — it is civic infrastructure for cultural sustainability, transforming creativity into opportunity and ensuring Detroit’s creative renaissance endures for generations to come.”
— Amani Olu, Founder & Director, Season
Photos by Bre’Ann White, with select contributions by fellow travelers.
Library Street Collective, Louis Buhl & Co., & a game of Horse.
Across from Library Street Collective and Louis Buhl & Co., The Belt alleyway features a series of installations by artists Patrick Martinez, L. Kasimu Harris, and Nina Chanel Abney, among others.
When we launched Commissioner Detroit in May 2022, we partnered with the generous team at Louis Buhl & Co. to introduce a collection of works by Amna Asghar, Judy Bowman, and Darryl DeAngelo Terrell. Now, full circle, we’re back to celebrate Asghar’s solo booth at Season, along with the remarkable exhibition featuring artists Davariz Broaden and Murjoni Merriweather at the gallery, as well as El Anatsui, Nick Cave, Myrlande Constant, and José Parlá at Library Street Collective.
Also part of the LSC program is HORSE: A Game for Everyone by artist Tyrrell Winston. “Central to the installation is a sculptural “hoop tree” that reimagines the familiar form of the basketball hoop into a sprawling, seven-armed tree supporting 21 hoops at varying heights, angles, and orientations. Part monument, part playground, the work invites direct engagement, encouraging visitors to step into the space, pick up a ball, and play.”
Welcome to the first edition of Season.
Panel conversation Who is the Art World For? with Allison Glenn, Akua Hill, and Christian Rattemeyer. Moderated by Commissioner Co-Founder Dejha Carrington.
Allison Glenn, the curator-at-large for The Shepard in Detroit and panel participant, was once asked, "What’s the most overrated thing in the art world?"
Glenn explained, “Believing that the center of the country is the periphery and that the periphery is the center. There are many centers in the [art] world.”
In Detroit, we learned something about the regional fair renaissance and finding success in this challenging market.
In the vault at Cranbrook Art Museum.
Have you ever wondered where all of the artwork lives when it’s not on display? Or thought about how it is moved from place to place? The Collections Wing opened in late 2011, making Cranbrook one of the first museums in the world to allow public access to its storage facilities.
Among the 8,000+ works, featured is the original two-dimensional painting by Charles McGhee that later inspired a monumental series of sculptures adorning the grassy lawn at The Shepard.
Seen/Scene at Shepherd Detroit.
Charles McGee Park at The Shepherd in Detroit.
An essential stop at Warda, the James Beard Award-winning patisserie, included curator conversations with Juana Williams of Salon Detroit, Asia Hamilton of Womxnhouse, and Toni Moceri of Allied Media Projects.
After, Alessandra Ferrara invited us for a tour of The Shepherd campus and a sneak peek of Seen/Scene, curated by Laura Mott, Chief Curator at Cranbrook, and artist Nick Cave. The title of the exhibition nods to the thematic focus on portraiture and pays homage to Cave’s epic and culture-changing Detroit project Here/Hear presented throughout the city a decade ago.
In the studio, in situ.
Jova Lynne explained, “This loveseat has healing properties. You can sit on it.” Agreed.
Grateful to visit the private studios of artists Scott Hocking and Tyrrell Winston courtesy of Library Street Collective, and of artists Jova Lynne and Alberte Tranberg with the generous support of Matéria Gallery.
In a parallel space, we experienced Unit 1: 3583 Dubois—a site-specific art installation inside an apartment in Detroit made by Anders Herwald Ruhwald. “Inside the installation, the structure and the sense of the interior seems as if it has been raged by fire. On closer inspection, visitors will realize the interior is made out of carefully crafted wood, metal, glass, and glazed ceramic. This dream-like installation embraces the transformative qualities of fire as destructive and constructive in relation to the domestic and intimate.”
Across from the Detroit Institute of Arts, In the Life: Black Queerness Looking Back, Moving Forward, with co-curator Wayne Northcross. Learn more about the exhibition at detroitnews.com.
At home with the Whitakers.
“Detroit’s rich and vibrant visual arts scene owes a lot to those who collect and preserve local works, and one couple has taken that mission a step further, nurturing young talent even as they honor past greats. David and Linda Whitaker are among Detroit’s most widely known and respected names in the local art-collecting community. Together, they’ve quietly spent decades amassing a marvelous collection of mostly African American art, from mostly Detroit artists.”
— Duante Beddingfield, Detroit Free Press
So very thankful to the Whitakers for opening up their hearts and home to us. Every visit offers a new perspective, a new lesson.
Ecosystems and ecologies with Bre’Ann White and Bulk Space.
The Girl with the D Earring by Detroit artist Sydney G. James, featuring a cameo appearance by Shani Peters of The Black School.
From institutions and commercial spaces to organizers and artists, we experienced Detroit from many vantage points. Perhaps most grounding was a conversation and neighborhood walk with Jes Allie of Bulk Space and creative entrepreneur Bre’Ann White.
On the agenda: how to dismantle barriers in the arts by offering workshops, residencies, publications, public programs, exhibitions, and access. Learn more about Bulk Space’s mission and work here.
Special thanks to our conspirators & co-pilots Amani Olu, Toni Moceri, and Bre’Ann White. Big up to the Olu & Company and Season teams, Library Street Collective, and and Tito’s Handmade Vodka.
Detroit feels like a warm hug: We are so grateful for all of the artists, arts workers, champions and friends for gently guiding us. And, finally, all the love to Commissioner members for their trust and openness.