The artist Nick Cave plans to flood Detroit with his trademark sound suits, to coincide with his show (Here Hear, until 11 October) at the Cranbrook Art Museum in nearby Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. In July, young LGBTQ people from the Ruth Ellis Center will dance around town in the artist’s elaborate outfits, while three local dance companies stage their own Cave-inspired performances in public plazas and parks. The collaborations are part of a sprawling, seven-month-long public programme, partly funded by a $150,000 matching grant from the Knight Foundation. For Cave, the events are a way of saying thank you to Detroit: as the only African-American student at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in the late 1980s, he took refuge in the city’s rich black cultural life. The excitement continues in September, when Cave will lead a procession of 30 life-sized horse sculptures operated by 60 high-school dancers along the city’s riverfront.
