I just got back from a trip with Jeannie to the Midwest, specifically Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. The trip was centered on an origami event, CFC6 (Conference for Creators, Number 6), hosted by my good friend Beth in Ann Arbor Michigan. We’d never been to that part of the country before, so we figured we’d do a few days touristing before the conference began.
Our flight left NYC Monday morning and landed in Detroit shortly before noon. From there we had time for one daytime activity, and chose the National Museum of the Great Lakes in Toledo, Ohio. The main attraction here was a decommissioned lake freighter. As the big freighters go she was bigger than most, I think they said 800 feet long. You could go up to the bridge and down into the hold and engine room. Pretty neat. The rest of museum was housed in a regular building and featured exhibits about the history, ecology, climate, and economy of the great lakes region, with a lot about the evolution boats and ships, from indigenous people and the arrival of French fur trappers up thru the present day. The museum was situated in a larger park that was nice to walk around.
The evening we drove out to Auburn, Indiana. The main attraction there was the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum. I’ve been a longtime fan of Duesenberg, Cord and Auburn automobiles since I was a kid into building model cars, and this place has been on my bucket list for a long time. And it did not disappoint. For those who don’t know, these were some of the coolest classic cars ever, each with their own unique character. Duesenbergs in particular were the ultimate luxury car, big as a modern extra large SUV or monster pickup truck, but with a giant racecar engine and amazing styling and coachwork. They typically had aluminum bodies. (Each body was custom built on an engine/chassis platform.) Today they’re considered priceless, rolling works of art, with only a few hundred in existence. Twenty or so are in the museum, all meticulously restored. The ultimate Doozy is the SJ, with a supercharged engine and distinctive external exhaust pipes. The Auburn was the Duesenberg’s smaller cousin, smaller, lighter and slightly more affordable, but still with a focus on luxury and performance. They are famous for their boattail roadsters. Cord was its own thing, very advanced and a little weird for the day, being the the world’s first successful mass-manufactured front-wheel drive car, with its distinctive coffin nose and touches such as disappearing headlights. Sadly, Auburn Cord Duesenberg went out of business during the great depression. Amazing to think that these cars are all ninety years old or more, many of them over a hundred.
The museum was in the former company showroom and headquarters, and had a good selection of all of these cars, plus other historical autos including a Cadillac V-16, and a Lincoln and Chrysler from the same era, as well as a fleet of earlier models going back the the beginning of the 1900’s and the origin of automobiles. They also had some rare prototypes, some engines and few historical airplanes, and exhibits on E. L. Cord, the automotive design studio, and the history of the factory and the company, and the rise and fall of the automobile industry in Indiana.
Next door was the former manufacturing plant, which is now a classic car museum with alot of muscle cars from the 60’s, a handful of different kinds of racecars, and a broad spectrum of mainly American historical cars from the entire twentieth century. A couple 1960’s Mustangs like my own.
I will say my one big disappointment for the trip was that my other bucket-list item, the National Brass and Woodwind Museum and the Conn-Selmer factory in Elkhart, Indiana, closed sometime in 2025, even as we were beginning to plan our trip, so we never got to see that. Ah well.
Both days we had dinner at a bar nearby the museum we were visiting. I must say the general vibe of the tri-state region was exactly the opposite of exotic to me, rather it was very friendly warm and even felt familiar. The landscapes, the people, the history and context, all that. It felt alot upstate and western New York, and southern Ontario when you get out west toward London. I guess that’s what they mean by the Great Lakes Region.
Tuesday evening it was off to Ann Arbor. The convention didn’t officially start until Thursday, but there were activities slated for Wednesday. The convention was at a hotel called Webers, which was a very cool and funky hotel with a sort of art deco jazz age vibe. We watched the Sabres vs the Canadiens at the cozy, wood-paneled bar while the likes of Cannonball Adderley and Red Garland played on the PA.
Wednesday we met a bunch of our origami friends at breakfast, including Ilan and Nicolas, who run CFC and organized the conference. A short while later, a bunch of convened in the lobby and were joined by our host Beth for the main activity, a day trip into Detroit and the Detroit Institute of Art. Enough of us had a car that everyone got a ride, a pattern that continued throughout the week.
The Detroit Art Institute is a very cool museum. Its most famous and impressive work is the Detroit Industry mural by Diego Rivera, which fills all four walls of a giant hall and depicts the whole life-cycle of auto manufacturing in a complicated series of panels that merge realism, storytelling, symbolism and mythology in a way that sums up what we’ve seen so far in the Great Lakes Region perfectly. There were several other galleries including American modernists, and some Mid-Eastern and Asian collections that range from ancient Rome to the present day. Apparently there was also a furniture and industrial design collection that I missed. Ah well. It’s always good inspiration when a bunch of artists go to an art museum together.
We all got lunch, and then went to a place called Michigan Central Station, a former train station that was abandoned fell into disrepair in the later twentieth century. The city did not have enough money to demolish it and became a symbol of Detroit’s decline and misfortune. Over the last decade or so, it has been beautifully restored and is now a public attraction and event space, with the the building above the main concourse being an office tower, and overall a symbol of Detroit’s resurgence and renewal. Alot impressive stonework, particularly because you rarely see stone architecture looking new and clean.
Finally, that evening we had a barbecue at Beth’s house. It was a slightly larger group as more conference attendees came into town. It was unseasonably cool but I helped Beth build a fire in a firepit in her backyard. Beth has a very nice design studio in a building in her backyard that used to be a garage, including a large table for folding. Makes me want to rethink my own studio setup. Anyway, it was great to hang out and catch up with my origami friends in a relaxed setting. Although there’s some overlap with the OUSA regular crowd, there’s a bunch of Midwesterners I rarely see.
Okay, halfway thru the trip. The conference is set to begin Thursday morning. I’m exhausted already.
