JoliAmour DuBose-Morris speaks with Taylor Renee Aldridge about her start in the arts, how Modern Ancient Brown Foundation supports Detroit’s artists, and the restful energy of the city.
A day before I met Taylor Renee Aldridge, I was running my battery low from taking pictures of Meleko Mokgosi’s Zone of Non-Being at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. I was particularly struck by the annotated canvases of Sara Cone Bryant’s Epaminondas and His Auntie, and one which explicitly defined the word “auntie” as “indicating respect: an older woman, also used as a title, with a first or surname.” We all have aunties; they are not our mothers, but they listen to us and shape the building blocks to our success. Coincidentally, Aldridge’s journey back to Detroit was because she was excited about being an auntie to her sister’s daughter, and an auntie to the young artists of the Modern Ancient Brown Foundation (MAB).
I mentioned the alignment and Alridge nods, “I really appreciate you saying that because I’ve been trying to articulate what I’ve been feeling lately. There’s a particular sensation that comes with having a certain level of power and access to care for the people you love, as well as for people in the professional space who you feel have not been cared for by other organizations, institutions, or industries.” The new executive director is providing mentorship for MAB’s artists, nurturing a relationship rooted in care and generosity.
I get to know Aldridge in the Shepherd, a renovated church-turned-arts-center in the East Village neighborhood of Detroit. I’m nervous, and slightly under-dressed in my wrinkly Rocawear jacket. Contrastingly, Aldridge is sharp, mindful of her words, and always asking herself, “Where do I want to go with this?” I observe her while she dices at fruit in her yogurt parfait. She wears beaded jade bracelets on both wrists, a neat plum blazer, tortoise eyeglasses, and black New Balances with a hint of emerald green. Everything about her is genuine, a foreshadowed outline of her work — original and intentional.
Aldridge and I are brought together in her birthplace. The curator left in 2007 to study business at Howard University. As much as Aldridge admired art, her early groundings started when she was young. “My first engagement and learning about an artist was through my art teacher in first or second grade, Miss Hawkins. She taught me about the work of Lois Mailou Jones, and that was the first artist I learned about. Like—I didn’t learn about the Italian masters, baroque masters, and all of that. It was Lois Mailou Jones, who’s a Harlem Renaissance artist. And so that was my starting point.” Aldridge’s upbringing was positively shaped by the expression of Black female representation in portraiture and abstraction, where she could see herself reflected. Yet, this love did not immediately lead to a career.
When Aldridge was discovering that she was unhappy in her major, her mother found an article about Thelma Golden and her work as a curator. Aldridge remembers, “[My mom was] almost like, ‘You can do this! This is probably what you need to do.’ I read the article. I went, ‘Okay, this is something I could see myself doing,’ so I switched my major to art history, focusing primarily on post-war African American artists.”
With her transition from business to art, Aldridge began to notice a disparity between the academic discourse and her own lived experience. She reflects: “There was this inner subjective dialogue happening about Black artists and Black subjectivity, but then to go to American University, or especially George Washington University and see that virtually no artists of color were in the curriculum… I think that began the awareness of a chasm within this [field], and that I had a very particular engagement that is different from students in art history.” She began to ask critical questions: “Who is not being included in these conversations? What am I missing in certain discourses that are constantly prioritizing cis, white, male people?”
These questions center her work as both a curator and as MAB’s director. The relationship between these artists and Aldridge is built out of ensuring that they are receiving the support that they need beyond just money: value, worth, legacy. “I want these artists to start thinking now on how they’ll be remembered,” she says.
At MAB, artists are able to receive more aid besides short-term funds. Two post-baccalaureate artists-in-residence (currently Kenise Gaston and Maya Davis) share the studio space and supported with a monthly stipend of $1,500 for their materials. Once the residency is over, they participate in a joint showcase in the studio of their final works, creating a pinned point for network and community.
When speaking to MAB’s Founder McArthur Binion, the Mississippi-born, Chicago-based artist, he shared how the foundation’s beginnings trace back to a conversation with his daughter. In his words, she asked him, “Papa, you can make all this money and not help people?” Binon’s journey into the art world has been one of evolution and discovery. He has been around since before art had even become an industry, travelling and beginning his career as a writer before discovering that he was an artist. Over the years, he’s spent time in Detroit, New York, and different parts of Europe—in fact, he’s soon heading to Rome.
Binion is unapologetic, having lived in a time where social media could not penetrate his own judgment. Funnily, he’s also incredibly open with the public forum. One of his showings, DNA: Work and the Under: Conscious Drawings, included reproductions intimate personal artifacts—his birth certificate, phone book, and pictures of his childhood home. The legacy of McArthur Binion is McArthur Binion: it is all of him or nothing.
Aldridge didn’t just leave Detroit in 2007; she returned in 2014, a pivotal year for the city, which had filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy the year before. “When I came back in 2014, I realized really quickly that the Detroit I knew was at risk of getting lost, getting erased. Simultaneously, I saw that artists were getting erased from the developing narratives that were happening in the city about the arts community. It often did not include people who were from here and prioritized a lot of transplants.”
Aldridge left for California in 2020, in part due to the growing disconnect between Detroit its artists, especially in terms of support and resources. Despite her feelings of guilt, there was an understanding that the city could not offer the opportunities that she deserved. Detroit artists have also migrated, finding themselves new residents of cities like Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. They are struggling to secure opportunities in these bright-eyed, bustling, yet over-saturated cities, driven by a need for support that their beloved hometown can no longer sustain.
Art remains the universal connection around which mine and Aldrige’s short conversation revolves. Our likes and dislikes are built on the bare existence of art. Yet libraries are closed, art and theater programs are defunded, new series are canceled, journalists, laid off. All justified in the name of preservation. But who, then, is preserving the arts? Our cultural ecosystem depends on these networks, something no one understands like Aldridge does.
Another opportunity offered by MAB is the Visiting Fellowship, which supports BIPOC scholars, thinkers, and writers, regardless of their involvement in the Academy. MAB provides each Fellow with funds for air travel, accommodation and a study space for 4 to 6 weeks in the Shepherd, a stipend of up to $7,500, a weekly $500 per diem for supplies, and library facilities. Beyond this comprehensive support from MAB and the Metro-Detroit cultural community, however, is the assurance of serenity and solitude.
Aldridge mentions a conversation she had with Ricky Bird, a recent Fellow who stayed over the summer. She recalls Bird finding it “kind of fascinating that I just have space and time to just be. Not have an agenda, not have any expectations around what I’m supposed to be doing here. Just be in a reading residency if I want to, or just sleep, or just be in leisure and walk around the city,” Aldridge quotes.
In the two days I spent there—gazing up to admire how the roadways curved over the buildings, sipping a dirty blonde Cliff Bell’s, or lounging in a pale pink robe at The Siren Hotel—I felt that. Coming from New York, where it’s easy to forget to appreciate yourself for just being human, Detroit whistled the need for rest. Aldridge could have accepted offers in other cities, but nothing beats Detroit; the history, music, and touch of artist integrity, makes an irrefutable offer. “I kind of just want to share the beauty of what Detroit is—its people, its resources—and just allow people to rest when they come here through the program.”
The culture of Detroit is alive, and foundations like MAB are nurturing it, elevating it to new heights. Modern Ancient Brown is sowing the seeds, ensuring that the Metro-Detroit community of artists will continue to be supported, seen, and celebrated.
Words by JoliAmour DuBose-Morris
