Understanding the Impact of Gun Violence in Detroit

Gun violence impacts society.

What better place is there to understand gun violence than the city of Detroit, Mi.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit is hosting an exhibition called The Gun Violence Memorial Project. It is a site of remembrance and a space for collective mourning.

The Gun Violence Memorial Project consists of four glass houses, each holding 700 bricks to symbolize the average number of people who died from gun violence each week in 2019, the year the project was launched. By 2024, this figure has risen to 800 weekly deaths.

The memorial's main idea is to illustrate the vast extent of gun violence while paying tribute to the personal stories of those impacted. The house shape serves as a universal emblem of community, highlighting that every neighborhood is affected by this tragedy. Each brick contains objects provided by family members to commemorate their loved ones. We invite you to step into these houses and witness the genuine human cost of gun violence.

REMEMBRANCE OBJECTS

The items in this display serve as proof of lives that were lived. Families across the U.S. who have been directly affected by gun violence have provided these objects. These items were given to the memorial in person or by mail and have traveled to various cities, including Chicago, Washington D.C., Boston, and now Detroit.

Should you visit MOCAD https://mocadetroit.org/, you'll find this exhibit quite striking. Consider the staggering statistic of 800 young adults and children losing their lives to gun violence each week.

This is a difficult figure to grasp in our contemporary, seemingly advanced society.