Charles McGee

McGee attended George Washington Elementary School. He also took part in art classes at Highland Park’s McGregor Public Library and went to Cleveland High School in nearby Hamtramck where his artistic abilities contributed to the high school’s float designs for school parades. His kinetic art reflects a joyousness in his African American roots and a love of nature, compared by one to the rhythmic music of jazz. In 1969 he was one of the artists in the Detroit Artists Market’s seminal exhibit “Seven Black Artists,” spawning Gallery 7, which McGee opened a year later. The gallery also had free art classes for children, exemplifying his role as a mentor. McGee claimed to be proudest of opening his own art school, Charles McGee School for the Arts. His strong presence in Detroit’s art community was rewarded in 2008 when he was named the first Kresge Eminent Artist, which came with a $50,000 prize from the Kresge Foundation. Described as “an important chronicler of black life in urban America … [with a] vision of building a better, more beautiful and uplifting world,” McGee never left Detroit despite his international fame. McGee’s works are found in several museums including the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts , where he has 12 pieces including Noah’s Ark: Genesis , and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History where United We Stand is displayed in front. His Blue Nile is at the Broadway People Mover station and the 2017 mural Unity , is an 11-story mural in Capitol Park. In 2012 the Detroit News honored him with a Michiganian of the Year award and in 2019 he received a Legacy Award from Michigan Legacy Art Park to recognize his “lifetime of achievements and influences as an artist, teacher, advocate and global citizen. A stroke in 2011 limited his ability to work, though he did not stop working. His last project was creating stylized figures for the Charles McGee Legacy Park that opened on Detroit’s east side in 2024. He died in his Rosedale Park home on February 4, 2021 at the age of 96.