A River That Separates? Imaging the Detroit River, 1804-2001

Drawn from the AGW collection, A River That Separates? brings together a varied group of artist’s perspectives of the Detroit River over the past 200 years. From renderings by British colonialists hired to map the border, to marine imagery of the river’s role in international trade, to scenes of the river in urban development, the Detroit River has continually been a compelling subject for artists. Their cumulative stories demonstrate how the river has been both an important international border and water route that joins, as much as it separates, our two nations. These artists have created a visual world connected by the river, and their views encourage audiences to recast and reconsider the historical divisions of space we have created in the past – such as our nationalized histories of ‘Canadian art’ and ‘American art,’ for example – and to see this river-border as a zone of its own that contests such divisions against lived experience.