 | This article needs to be updated.(September 2020) |
The culture of Ann Arbor, Michigan includes various attractions and events, many of which are connected with the University of Michigan.
| This article needs to be updated.(September 2020) |
The culture of Ann Arbor, Michigan includes various attractions and events, many of which are connected with the University of Michigan.
Many performing arts groups and facilities are located on the University of Michigan campus, including Hill Auditorium, the Lydia Mendelssohn Theater, and the Power Center for the Performing Arts.
The University Musical Society (UMS) presents approximately 60 to 75 performances and over 100 free educational activities each season. One of the oldest performing arts presenters in the country, UMS is affiliated with the University of Michigan and housed on the UM campus. However, UMS is a separate not-for-profit organization that supports itself from ticket sales, grants, contributions, and endowment income.
The University of Michigan Gilbert and Sullivan Society, affiliated with the university's School of Music, Theatre, and Dance, has put on two fully staged performances of a Gilbert and Sullivan Savoy opera every year since 1947, once in fall semester and the other in winter semester. The society is student-run. Performances take place at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theater. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Ann Arbor has a number of performing-arts institutions that are not affiliated with the University of Michigan. They include the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre (a nonprofit community theater group), Ann Arbor Ballet Theater, Ann Arbor Civic Ballet (the first chartered ballet company in Michigan when it was founded in 1954), Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, and Arbor Opera Theater.
Theaters in the city include:
Ann Arbor also has a number of concert halls and nightclubs serving up jazz and other live music:
There are several religious sites in Ann Arbor, including:
The Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, located in a renovated and expanded historic downtown fire station, contains more than 250 interactive exhibits featuring science and technology. Artrain, located on North Main Street, is a traveling art museum located on a train. [5]
A number of other art galleries exist in the city, notably in the downtown area and around the University of Michigan campus, notably the University of Michigan Museum of Art, which has a variety of outdoor sculptures, including Orion and Daedalus .
Several buildings throughout the downtown area, like Sweetwaters Coffee and Tea and The Ark, showcase pieces of independent installation art in the form of small "fairy doors". Maps of their locations can be found at Sweetwaters or the Chamber of Commerce.
 | This article is written like a travel guide .(February 2012) |
Among U.S. cities, Ann Arbor ranks first in the number of antiquarian booksellers and books sold per capita (although the per capita calculations may not include the large student population). [14] The Ann Arbor District Library maintains four branch outlets in addition to its main downtown building, with a fifth branch set to open in 2008. The city is also home to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
Ann Arbor is also known within the performance poetry scene. The Neutral Zone, a local teen center, is home to the Volume Youth Poetry Project which holds a competition every year to send a team of six youth poets to the national youth competition Brave New Voices. The city hosted this competition in 2001 and 2002, and has sent a team each year across the U.S.
Ann Arbor (or its surrounding region) is also the setting (or the presumed setting) for a number of novels and short story collections.
Ann Arbor is the setting for much of the film The Four Corners of Nowhere (1995), as well as The Five-Year Engagement (2012). Parts of the film Jumper (2008) are set in Ann Arbor, using both footage shot locally and footage using Peterborough, Ontario as an Ann Arbor stand-in. Ann Arbor is also frequently mentioned in the television series Lost.
Starting in 2010, the Michigan Film Incentive lead to several major films shooting in and around Ann Arbor including Conviction . [15] The film's offices and post-production were headquartered in Ann Arbor, using many area landmarks as backdrops. Shooting took place around Ann Arbor as well as smaller towns like Pittsfield Township, Chelsea and Dexter.
Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the seat of government of Washtenaw County. The 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851, making it the fifth-largest city in Michigan. It is the principal city of the Ann Arbor Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Washtenaw County. Ann Arbor is also included in the Greater Detroit Combined Statistical Area and the Great Lakes megalopolis, the most populated and largest megalopolis in North America.
The Ann Arbor Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Established in 1963, it is the fourth-oldest film festival in North America and the oldest experimental film festival. It has become one of the premier film festivals for independent and, especially, experimental filmmakers to showcase their work. The Ann Arbor Film Festival attracts over 3,000 entries from filmmakers in more than 60 countries, and distributes over $20,000 in cash awards. As an early example of the traveling festival concept beginning in 1964, each year the Ann Arbor Film Festival Tour presents a collection of short films at more than 30 art house theaters, universities, galleries and cinematheques throughout the world.
The Detroit Opera House is an ornate opera house located at 1526 Broadway Street in Downtown Detroit, Michigan, within the Grand Circus Park Historic District. The 2,700-seat venue is the home of productions of the Detroit Opera and a variety of other events. The theatre was originally designed by C. Howard Crane, who created other prominent theatres in Detroit including The Fillmore Detroit, the Fox Theater and the Detroit Symphony's Orchestra Hall. It opened on January 22, 1922.
Hill Auditorium is the largest performance venue on the University of Michigan campus, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The auditorium was named in honor of Arthur Hill (1847-1909), who served as a regent of the university from 1901 to 1909. He bequeathed $200,000 to the university for the construction of a venue for lectures, musical performances, and other large productions. Opened in 1913, the auditorium was designed by Albert Kahn and Associates. It was renovated by the same firm beginning in 2002 and was re-opened in 2004.
The University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance is an undergraduate and graduate institution for the performing arts in the United States. It is part of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The school was founded in 1880 after Henry Simmons Frieze, founder and president of the Choral Union and the University Musical Society, urged leaders to include music among the school's offerings. The college was known then as the Ann Arbor School of Music. It was later incorporated into the University of Michigan with Calvin Brainerd Cady joining the faculty as the first instructor in music, after already being hired by Frieze to conduct the Choral Union.
Nichols Arboretum, locally known as the Arb, is an arboretum operated by the Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum (MBGNA) at the University of Michigan. Located on the eastern edge of its Central Campus at 1610 Washington Heights in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the Arboretum is a mosaic of University and City properties operated as one unit. The arboretum is open daily from sunrise to sunset with no charge for admission. The Huron River separates a northern section of the arboretum's floodplain woods; the railroad marks the northern border.
MIX NYC is a not-for-profit organization based in New York City and dedicated to queer experimental film. It is also known as the "MIX festival," for its most visible program, the annual New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival (NYLGEFF), which has featured early works by filmmakers such as Christine Vachon, Todd Haynes, Isaac Julien, Thomas Allen Harris, Barbara Hammer, Jonathan Caouette, Jennie Livingston, and Matthew Mishory.
The Ann Arbor Art Fair is a group of four award-winning, not-for-profit United States art fairs that take place annually in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Over 400,000 visitors attend the fairs each year. Prior to 2016, the fair ran Wednesday through Saturday, generally the third weekend in July. Beginning in 2016, the days shifted to Thursday through Sunday. There was no event in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic was to blame; it returned in 2021.
Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival is a music festival in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that started in 1972 from the Ann Arbor Blues Festival, which itself began in 1969. Although the festival has had a tumultuous history and suspended operations in 2006, it was restarted in 2017.
Gary Grimshaw was an American graphic artist active in Detroit and San Francisco who specialized in designing rock concert posters. He was also a radical political activist with the White Panther Party and related organizations.
Tourism in metropolitan Detroit, Michigan is a significant factor for the region's culture and for its economy, comprising nine percent of the area's two million jobs. About 19 million people visit Metro Detroit spending an estimated 6 billion in 2019. In 2009, this number was about 15.9 million people, spending an estimated $4.8 billion. Detroit is one of the largest American cities and metropolitan regions to offer casino resort hotels. Leading multi-day events throughout Metro Detroit draw crowds of hundreds of thousands to over three million people. More than fifteen million people cross the highly traveled nexus of the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel annually. Detroit is at the center of an emerging Great Lakes Megalopolis. An estimated 46 million people live within a 300-mile (480 km) radius of Metro Detroit.
The ONCE Group was a collection of musicians, visual artists, architects, and film-makers who wished to create an environment in which artists could explore and share techniques and ideas in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The group was responsible for hosting the ONCE Festival of New Music in Ann Arbor, Michigan, between 1961 and 1966. It was founded by Ann Arborites Robert Ashley, George Cacioppo, Gordon Mumma, Roger Reynolds and Donald Scavarda.
The culture of San Antonio reflects the history and culture of one of the state's oldest and largest cities straddling the regional and cultural divide between South and Central Texas. Historically, San Antonio culture comes from a blend of Central Texas and South Texas (Southwestern) culture. Founded as a Spanish outpost and the first civil settlement in Texas, San Antonio is heavily influenced by Mexican American culture due to Texas formerly being part of Mexico and, previously, the Spanish Empire. The city also has significant German, Anglo, and African American cultural influences. San Antonio offers a host of cultural institutions, events, restaurants and nightlife in South Texas for both residents and visitors alike.
The University Musical Society (UMS) is a not-for-profit performing arts presenter located on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was established in December 1880. While UMS is affiliated with the University of Michigan and is a regular collaborator with many university units, UMS supports itself from ticket sales, foundation and government grants, corporate and individual contributions, and endowment income.
The culture of Columbus, Ohio, is particularly known for museums, performing arts, sporting events, seasonal fairs and festivals, and architecture of various styles from Greek Revival to modern architecture.
Ypsilanti, commonly shortened to Ypsi, is a city in Washtenaw County in the U.S. state of Michigan, best known as the home of Eastern Michigan University.
The performing arts in Detroit include orchestra, live music, and theater, with more than a dozen performing arts venues. The stages and old time film palaces are generally located along Woodward Avenue, the city's central thoroughfare, in the Downtown, Midtown, and New Center areas. Some additional venues are located in neighborhood areas of the city. Many of the city's significant historic theaters have been revitalized.
Mary Ashley was an important early video artist and performance artist, painter, and a founding member of the influential ONCE Group, together with her then-husband, the composer Robert Ashley. She was later active in the Correspondence Art scene, collaborating with Fluxus artists including Dick Higgins and George Brecht. She is credited with introducing the Ozalid process, an ammonia-based technique for the reproduction of industrial drawings, to the art world.
The LGBT community in Metro Detroit is centered in Ferndale, Michigan, as of 2007. As of 1997, many LGBT people live in Ferndale, Pleasant Ridge, and Royal Oak. Model D stated in 2007 that there are populations of gays and lesbians in some Detroit neighborhoods such as East English Village, Indian Village, Lafayette Park, and Woodbridge and that the concentration of gay bars in Detroit is "decentralized".
Shakespeare in the Arb is an annual event, presented in the open, in Nichols Arboretum. Nichols Arboretum is a 123-acre heavily wooded park, with large landscape lawns surrounded by the woods, a river, and steep hills. The plays are moving events, with both performers and audience moving from location to location within the park as the play progresses. At each location a segment of the play is performed. The plays begin in the early evening, and are put on near the summer solstice as no artificial lighting is used.