Detroit might not be doing so well - it was placed this month under the control of an emergency manager as it tries to stave off financial default. But its contemporary-art scene is thriving and on Tuesday the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit announced that it had selected a new director after more than a year and a half without a permanent leader. Elysia Borowy-Reeder, who was most recently the director of the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, N.C., where she focused on strengthening that museum’s education programs, will take over in early April.
The Detroit museum is nearing completion of one of the final projects of Mike Kelley, a replica of his childhood ranch-style home in the Detroit suburbs that will stand in a vacant lot near the museum and serve as a kind of social-services hub, providing food, education programs and other help to people around the museum. (Mr. Kelley committed suicide in January 2012.) The museum, founded seven years ago in a gritty downtown building that had been a car dealership, has been lauded for its adventurous programming and its role in helping to revitalize its neighborhood.
