Arikah Map

Culture in Ann Arbor, Michigan

Culture in Ann Arbor, Michigan:Ann Arbor's large student population helped make it a center for 1960s counterculture.
Enlarge
Ann Arbor's large student population helped make it a center for 1960s counterculture.

The culture of Ann Arbor, Michigan includes various attractions and events, many of which are connected with the University of Michigan.


Contents

Cultural history

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Ann Arbor was home to many influential rock bands, such as the MC5, Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, Brownsville Station, George Clinton, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Mitch Ryder, and The Rationals. In 1969, avant-garde jazz bandleader Sun Ra and his Arkestra spent about a month living in an Ann Arbor frat house, with poet-impressario John Sinclair and his radical White Panther Party for next-door neighbors. Madonna was a dance major at the University of Michigan in the late 1970s.

University of Michigan attractions

See also: Museums at the University of Michigan

Many performing arts groups and facilities are located on the University of Michigan campus, including Hill Auditorium, the Lydia Mendelson Theater, and the Power Center for the Performing Arts.

The university campus is also the location of several prominent museums. The University of Michigan Museum of Art, located along South State Street, contains 14,000 works of African, Asian, Middle Eastern, European, and American art, and a changing exhibit. The Kelsey Museum of Archaeology contains 100,000 objects from the civilizations of the Mediterranean. Another museum is the Exhibit Museum of Natural History, which houses a planetarium as well as exhibits devoted to paleontology, zoology, anthropology, geology, and astronomy.

Venues

Institutions

Museums and attractions

Ann Arbor has a notable beer-brewing culture and is home to three brewpubs located in downtown: Arbor Brewing Co., Grizzly Peak Brewing Co., and Leopold Bros. (which is also a distillery). Breweries in nearby towns Dexter, (e.g. Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales) and Ypsilanti, (e.g. Corner Brewery) also contribute to Ann Arbor's brew scene.

Events

Spring

Summer

Fall

Winter

Literary culture

Among U.S. cities, Ann Arbor ranks first in the number of booksellers and books sold per capita.[4]

Ann Arbor is also known within the performance poetry scene. The Neutral Zone, a local teen center, is home to the Volume Youth Poetry Project which holds a competition every year to send a team of six youth poets to the national youth competition Brave New Voices. The city hosted this competition in 2001 and 2002, and has sent a team each year across the U.S.

Films and fictional writing set in Ann Arbor

Ann Arbor (or its surrounding region) is also the setting (or the presumed setting) for a number of novels and short story collections, including:

Ann Arbor is the setting for much of the film The Four Corners of Nowhere.

Notes

  1. ^ City Guide - Dance. arborweb.com. Accessed August 18, 2005.
  2. ^ Artrain USA: About Artrain. Accessed June 4, 2006.
  3. ^ Naked Mile Data Page. goodspeedupdate.com.
  4. ^ Ann Arbor Guide 2003-4. Ecurrent.com. Accessed August 17, 2005.

References

Categories


Ann Arbor, Michigan | Michigan culture

Find

Find

Find