Mayor Mike Duggan congratulates 2025 ACE Honors Medal Recipients

• Third Annual Detroit ACE Honors Medals Ceremony is Friday, May 23, 2025 at 7:30 a.m. at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History

• 2025 Detroit ACE Honorees are Amp Fiddler, Henry Harper, Dr. Gloria Aneb House, Njia Kai and Carole Morisseau.

   

The City Office of Arts, Culture and Entrepreneurship (Detroit ACE) will host the Third Annual Detroit ACE Honors Medals Ceremony on Friday, marking a continuing commitment to creative veterans who have helped make Detroit’s reputation stellar.

Honorees will receive a Medal of Excellence at the breakfast at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History on May 23, 2025 at 7:30 a.m. The event is free, but registration is required at: https://ThirdAnnualACEHonors.eventbrite.com. 

The awards ceremony will be followed by the annual State of the Arts address by Director of Arts and Culture Rochelle Riley. Riley will lay out a vision to sustain Detroit’s creative workforce, which includes fine and performing artists who are among the best in the country. She also will salute the Kresge Foundation and City Historian Jamon Jordan, who has completed three years of stellar service in his role as the City’s first official historian.

"Detroit has always been one of the world's great centers for arts and culture and this year's ACE Honors Medal recipients are an important part of that legacy and tradition," said Mayor Mike Duggan. "Each has made significant contributions in their respective discipline that has enriched and enlightened our community."  

This year’s honorees were selected last year by a panel of artists and community leaders. Honorees are:

Amp Fiddler, a global hip-hop and funk legend whose influence was wide, and heart was big. Born Anthony Joseph Fiddler on May 16, 1958, in Detroit, Amp Fiddler grew up in the East Side neighborhood near Pershing High School, where he started his musical journey with the R&B group Enchantment. His musical influence bridged the gap between funk, R&B and house music in the 1970s and 80s and hip-hop and neo-soul music in late 1990s and into the 21st century. Fiddler was a member of Parliament Funkadelic in the 1980s and worked with artists ranging from Prince and Maxwell, to Jamiroquai and Seal, to A Tribe Called Quest and Slum Village. For four decades, he mentored artists across the country and is credited with introducing J Dilla to the Akai MPC drum machine, which Dilla later used to  create an amazing library of hip-hop music. Fiddler died of cancer in December 2023. A year later the City declared his birthday as Amp Fiddler Day. Last week, Revere Street, where he grew up and began his career in Conant Gardens received the secondary name of Amp Fiddler Avenue.

Henry Harper, who has been in the art business since 1973. Harper doesn’t just host exhibitions at his gallery, Harper Galleries of Art & Antiques near Belle Isle’s historic MacArthur Bridge. He co-founded, with Harold Braggs, one of the largest grassroots, continuous exhibitions in the state, the Detroit Fine Arts Breakfast Club. Originally from Toledo, Ohio. Harper moved to Detroit in 1991 and has been a practicing fine arts advisor, mentor and furniture expert ever since. His goal is to help young Detroit artists accomplish their dreams. Every week, young artists – and some veterans – showcase their work at a gathering where you won’t find breakfast but will find an appreciation for local art. The group started in 2009 and met for years at Noni’s Sherwood Grille in northwest Detroit. It grew too large for the restaurant and moved the weekly gatherings to the Marygrove Conservancy campus. Since its founding, artists have sold nearly $3 million worth of art in the club exhibitions, and Harper hopes to have a permanent headquarters for the club soon.

Dr. Gloria Aneb House was born in Tampa, Florida and came to Detroit in 1967.  She has published four poetry collections, Blood River (1983), Rainrituals (1989), Shrines (2003) and Medicine (2017) under her chosen African name, Aneb Kgositsile.  She has been an activist since the student and civil rights movements of the 1960s.  During the Black Arts/Black Consciousness movement, House was among a community of artists that included poet Sonia Sanchez, poet and founder of Third World Press Haki Madhubuti South African Poet Laureate Keorapetse Kgositsile, playwright Ron Milner, dancer-choreographer Jackie Hillsman and poet and founder of Broadside Press Dudley Randall. House was also active in the free speech movement while attending UC Berkeley. After leaving university to teach in a freedom school in Selma, Alabama, she worked as a field secretary in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She drafted SNCC’s statement against the Vietnam War, the first public opposition to the war to be issued by a civil rights organization. House is now a retired professor from Wayne State University and the University of Michigan-Dearborn. She has received the Kresge Foundation Eminent Artist Award WHEN? and active in the Detroit Independent Freedom Schools Movement, a community effort “to create free, African-centered, loving educational experiences for Detroit children and families.”

Njia Kai, a Detroit native, Cass Technical High School graduate and Howard University alumna, is founder and director of CAMP Detroit, co-founder of Cultural Arts Mentorship, a senior Producer of NKSK Events and an organizer of the Detroit African World Festival.  Additionally, she directs and curates major public events and cultural arts projects across Detroit. Her focus on community enrichment and placemaking initiatives engages her expertise in a wide variety of civic and community projects. She also directs arts-based summer and after-school programs for city youth, activating her philosophy that arts and culture are vital to healthy youth and human development.  Kai enjoyed a burgeoning film career on the East Coast, where she notably served as camerawoman on Julie Dash’s classic 1991 film Daughters of the Dust, which was added to the Library of Congress in 2004 — the same year Kai began programming events at Campus Martius Park. Years before becoming Detroit’s unofficial social director, Kai spotted a classified ad seeking a production coordinator for the Detroit Festival of the Arts and the University Cultural Center Association, the organization that would merge with the New Center Council to become Midtown Detroit Inc. Kai spent the next 24 years with the festival, ultimately becoming its director. Known to the community as Mama Njia she is a busy wife, mother and proud grandmother.

Carole Morisseau is an award-winning Michigan artist who has exhibited internationally, nationally, regionally and at local galleries, including at the Detroit Artists Market and the Scarab Club. Her work emphasizes traditional painting and drawing techniques. A retired Detroit Public Schools art teacher, she was a recipient of a Fulbright Hays Fellowship Group Project Abroad, where she studied Afro-Brazilian art and culture. Her 3D interactive installation, “Healing Wall” was created as a development of that journey.  Morisseau’s work was selected to be exhibited in the Fulbright 75th Anniversary Exhibition, a global event featuring 40 visual artists from around the globe. Her work was selected to hang in the Kresge Arts in Detroit main offices and can be found in collections across the U.S., Canada, Haiti and Brazil and in those of CCH Pounder and at Henry Ford Health, the University of Detroit Mercy and HGTV.  Carole was selected for the Cuttyhunk Island Artist Residency, Massachusetts in 2019. She sits on the Board of Directors of two historical arts organizations, the Scarab Club Detroit and Detroit Artists Market. She has been honored by the Arab American Artists organization as an “Outstanding African American Artist.

Past ACE Honors Medalists are:

ELIZABETH “BETTY” BROOKS (2022) Board member of the Detroit Historical Society, Motown Museum, Detroit Jazz Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, and the Michigan Opera Theatre.

DAVID DICHIERA (2022) Founder of Michigan Opera Theatre (Detroit Opera); recipient of the Opera Honors Award by the National Endowment for the Arts, the nation’s highest award for lifetime achievement in opera.

ROBERT S. DUNCANSON (2022) Considered to be the first African American artist to gain international recognition and proclaimed by the American media as “the best landscape painter in the West.”

LEROY FOSTER (2022) Fine portrait painter and muralist known for public commissions; founded the Contemporary Studio with Charles McGee, Harold Neal and Henri Umbaji King.

TYREE GUYTON (2022) Neo-expressionist artist and creator of the internationally renowned Heidelberg Project; Kresge Visual Arts Fellow (2009).

MARION HAYDEN (2024) One of the nation’s finest proponents of the acoustic bass. The Detroit native, who was mentored by master trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, began performing jazz at age 15. She has performed with such diverse luminaries as Bobby McFerrin, Nancy Wilson, Regina Carter, David Allen Grier, James Carter, Dorothy Donegan and Joe Williams.

VERA HEIDELBERG (2022) Co-chair of the first Classical Roots Celebration, an annual concert sponsored by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra recognizing African American contributions to classical music.

HUBERT MASSEY (2024) A master artist who is the only commissioned African American fresco artist in the United States. Among his masterpieces are the 30-foot high Hellenic mural at the Atheneum Hotel, the 18-foot high frescoes at the Detroit Athletic Club, and Genealogy, a 72-foot diameter terrazzo at the entrance to the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

ARTIS LANE (2022) Portrait artist and sculptor known for works featuring President John F. Kennedy, Rosa Parks and Aretha Franklin; first woman to be admitted to the prestigious Cranbrook Art Academy.

CHARLES MCGEE (2022) Prolific painter and sculptor; founder of the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit; advised the State of Michigan, City of Detroit on cultural initiatives; first Kresge Eminent Artist (2008).

CARLOS NIELBOCK (2022) Master architectural ornamental metal and design artist, engineer and craftsman; inventor of the Detroit Windmill; founder of C.A.N. Art Handworks, an ornamental architectural metals studio.

GEORGE N'NAMDI (2024) Art dealer, gallery owner and renowned curator and collector. He is an educator both professionally and personally, guiding audiences and visitors to his popular Detroit gallery to a better understanding of art.

MADELYN PORTER (2024) Has worked in professional theatre for over 45 years as an actress, storyteller, comedian and creator of several one-woman shows. She is Connectivity and Engagement Manager for Detroit Public Theatre (DPT) and is a member of Actor’s Equity Association.

DUDLEY RANDALL (2022) The City of Detroit’s first Poet Laureate; called “the Father of the Black Poetry Movement”; founder of Broadside Press.

GRETCHEN VALADE (2022) Philanthropist and leading patron of the Detroit Jazz Festival and Wayne State University’s jazz program; founder of Grammy Award-winning Mack Avenue Records;  owner of the Dirty Dog Jazz Café.

ALVIN WADDLES (2024) Has delighted audiences for decades in over a dozen countries as a pianist, singer, composer and director, combining dazzling technique, fluid versatility and a unique musical style. He began studying the piano at age eight continued his studies at the Interlochen Arts Academy and the University of Michigan School of Music. He has been musical director and/or pianist for numerous theatrical productions including: THE WIZ, THE, THE COLOR PURPLE, DREAMGIRLS, A CHORUS LINE, WEST SIDE STORY and SOPHISTICATED LADIES

MARILYN WHEATON (2022) Longtime Director of the City of Detroit’s Cultural Affairs Department; helped orchestrate art for the Detroit Tricentennial Celebration, including the International Memorial to the Underground Railroad.

DEBRA WHITE-HUNT (2022) Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the Detroit-Windsor Dance Academy; choreographer for more than 50 ballets; director of more than 100 dance concerts; Kresge Arts Fellow (2020).

SHIRLEY WOODSON (2022) Iconic painter known for large-scale figurative work featured in the Detroit Institute of Arts; co-founder of the Michigan Chapter of the National Conference of Artists; Kresge Eminent Artist (2021).

JAMON JORDAN (2022) The first official CITY OF DETROIT HISTORIAN, an honorary position given to an individual who has a demonstrated knowledge of Detroit’s cultural history.

THE KRESGE FOUNDATION (2022, 2024, 2025) Each year, the ACE Awards also salute philanthropy, which has elevated and sustained Detroit arts and culture community for decades. Each year, ACE salutes the Kresge Foundation, which since 2008, has awarded more than $6.7 million through Kresge Arts in Detroit's Kresge Eminent Artist Awards, Kresge Artist Fellowships and Gilda Awards and the Ford Foundation, which has sustained the ACE Office and funded the first national exhibit of queer art and funded the City of Detroit’s Poet Laureate, first-ever Official Historian and first-ever Composer Laureate.

The Office of Art, Culture & Entrepreneurship (Detroit ACE) partners with organizations across the region to enhance and grow investment in the fine and performing arts and the city’s rich culture and history with a special focus on artistic entrepreneurship and support for Detroit’s creative workforce. Follow @detroitcityarts on Instagram and Facebook. See five years’ worth of ACE work @ https://heyzine.com/flip-book/ae8130edcc.html.