from “le détroit” · the strait
Library Street Collective reopened the former Good Shepherd church on Saturday as the anchor of Little Village, a multi-block arts campus in East Village.
On Saturday the former Good Shepherd Catholic Church reopened as an arts center run by Library Street Collective. The gallery says more than 4,000 people moved through the building over opening weekend.
The church was built between 1911 and 1912 as Annunciation, the work of the Detroit firm Donaldson and Meier, per Historic Detroit's public record of the building. It became Good Shepherd after a 2006 parish merger and held its last mass in 2016. Anthony and JJ Curis, who opened Library Street Collective downtown in 2012, announced plans for the site in 2021. The Brooklyn firm Peterson Rich Office handled the adaptive reuse, which the architects describe at roughly 14,000 square feet. The 1911 Romanesque shell stays largely intact.
Inside, two new gallery volumes have been set into the nave and the altar now works as a performance stage. Asmaa Walton of Black Art Library is building a public archive in one of the transepts. The old confessionals have become listening and multimedia booths, and a new mezzanine sits over the de-sanctified altar with an oculus cut through its center, looking down on the gallery floor.
The grounds run another 3.5 acres of green space. Charles McGee Legacy Park anchors them with three of the late artist's sculptures, conceived before his death. McArthur Binion and Tony Hawk designed the skatepark, named It Takes a Village. The bed and breakfast in the former rectory is called ALEO, after the Angel, Lion, Eagle, and Ox figures from the building's old murals. Binion's nonprofit, Modern Ancient Brown Foundation, which supports Black and Indigenous artists, takes the third floor.
The first show is Charles McGee: Time Is Now, curated by MOCAD artistic director Jova Lynne. It runs through July 20 and draws on McGee's paintings, assemblages, sculptures, and drawings, including pieces shown for the first time. A companion exhibition, Kinship: The Legacy of Gallery 7, opens at MOCAD on June 28 and runs through September 23. McGee lived from 1924 to 2021.
"We count ourselves among the many who were touched by Charles McGee's life and career, his commitment to uplifting the arts in Detroit and his passion for this city," Anthony and JJ Curis said in the gallery's announcement of the exhibition.
Andi Watson, a longtime lighting designer for Radiohead, did the lighting. Office of Strategy and Design handled the landscape, including the alley turned walkway called The Nave. Allison Glenn, a curator who grew up in Detroit, leads the Shepherd's artistic program.
The campus has a name now: Little Village. Two adjacent houses are being adapted into BridgeHouse, a culinary commercial space designed by the Detroit studio Undecorated, with a patisserie from chef Warda Bouguettaya planned. A garage off the church is becoming a wine and cocktail bar called Father Forgive Me. A Louis Buhl and Co. gallery, designed by Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects, is slated to follow in the former convent. A few blocks west, the LANTERN building, a former bakery reworked by OMA, brings in Signal-Return, the Progressive Arts Studio Collective, and Assemble Sound.
East Village sits between Indian Village and Jefferson-Chalmers, blocks from the river, and has been tied to the fine arts since Pewabic Pottery built its Tudor home on East Jefferson in 1907. The Shepherd is the most ambitious attempt in a long time to test whether a contemporary arts campus can carry weight in a residential corridor.
1265 Parkview Street, East Village.
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