Detroiters spent the summer painting a 32-foot mural at the Dossin Great Lakes Museum

A new mural now stretches 32 feet across the west-facing wall of the Dossin Great Lakes Museum on Belle Isle, and Detroiters painted it themselves, one number at a time.

The piece is titled "Currents in Color," and it was designed by Detroit artist Brontae Williamson. It measures 32 by 8 feet and was built from sixteen four-foot square panels, each one a paint-by-number section that community members and museum visitors filled in by hand over the summer before the panels were assembled and installed.

That method is a nod to local history, and the project set out to honor paint-by-number's Metro Detroit origins. Paint-by-number was developed in Metro Detroit, popularized by the late artist Dan Robbins and Max Klein, president of the Palmer Paint Company. Turning a museum wall into a giant paint-by-number kit puts a homegrown invention back to work in the city that made it, and it hands the brush to the public instead of a single muralist.

Williamson is a multi-disciplinary designer with a product design degree from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. She built the design around Detroit's diversity and residents' connection to the city's natural beauty.

Her artwork was chosen from submissions that opened April 20 and closed June 1, with the winning design announced June 27. A six-member selection committee made the call: Dave Chow, Miah Davis, Claire Dossin, Doug Dossin, Michelle Perron, and Joel Stone. The project was made possible by a gift from Lisa Capra.

Museum stakeholders, local artists, and community members gathered for the unveiling on Wednesday, September 23.

For the Detroit Historical Society, which runs the museum, the point was getting people to make it together. "We're really the only institution that tells specifically Detroit stories," said Tracy Irwin, the society's chief exhibition and enrichment officer, who hopes a generation from now someone will tell their grandkids they were part of it.

The mural is on view now. The Dossin Great Lakes Museum is located at 100 Strand Drive on Belle Isle, and admission is $5 for adults and children and free for Detroit Historical Society members and children under 6.