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Detroit Industry Murals
The Detroit Industry Murals are a set of frescoes painted in the Detroit Institute of Arts by Mexican muralist Diego Rivera based on the evolution of technology. The murals, consisting of 27 panels in total, were commissioned by the institute's director William R. Valentiner on May 21, 1932 to portray the industrialization and workers of the car industry. The initial intention was for Rivera to only paint the North and South walls, however, the project was prolonged and made possible to do so by additional funding from Edsel B. Ford. These murals were considered by Diego Rivera to be his best American works.

Commisioned
The set of frescoes was first commissioned by William R. Valentiner, the director of the Detroit Institute of Arts. He commissioned Diego Rivera for $25,000 with no curtailment other than to depict the Detroit history and industry workers, specifically those of manual labor jobs pertaining to car assemblage. After accepting the offer Diego RIvera and his wife Frida Kahlo took a tour of the Ford River Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan. The Ford River Rouge is a Ford Motor Company automobile factory that at the time employed over 100,000 workers. The couple took hours of footage which allowed for extensive research for the project of the murals. At first Rivera had only been commissioned to paint the north and south walls of the courtyard. Rivera proposed a further extension of his work in order to cover all the walls of the museums court with murals. The further expansion was allowed based on its intent to continue the portrayal of Detroit's labor force and Detroit's history. The project was also funded by Edsel B. Ford, son of Henry Ford, then president of Ford Motor Company. The museum was to pay for all materials used during the project and Rivera would pay his own assistants. The supplies were quite costly but Valentiner was adamant about having his museum walls painted by Rivera. "I had always hoped to have on my museum walls a series of frescoes by a painter of our time, since where could a building be found nowadays that would last as long as a museum."-William Valentiner" After a year of work and $40,000 worth of production cost the murals were finished and signed on March 13, 1993. This project later lead to the interest of wealthy industrialist, Nelson Rockefeller, to paint a mural at the New York City Rockefeller center.

North and South Walls
The whole mural was made of four walls and 27 panels. These walls were the biggest and were primarily the commissioned murals. Three female figures are depicted on these walls. Each woman embodying the four races; Native American, African, European, and Asian. Each woman holds in her hand an Earth element; iron, coal, sand, and limestone. All of these elements are elements used in the steel making process which blatantly references Detroit's industrial history. All the women are depicted in their own panel in equal manners. Each figure's appearance is inspired by people Rivera had actually encountered. Like the African woman's appearance was based on the housekeeper of the hotel he was residing in during the project and the European was inspired by his assistants. The workers represented on the north wall are factory workers. The panel is 75 feet long by 17 feet high. The fluidity of movement is intentional so when looked at it seems as though the scene is moving like a conveyer belt. The spindles attached to the conveyer belts appear as ancient Toltec guardians to represent the connection of ancient pre-industrial ages with the modern science era. One of the spindles in fact is very close to a representation of Cuatlicue, an Aztec goddess known as both creator and destroyer. On the south wall Rivera adds a portrait of Edsel B. Ford and William Valentiner, the commissioners of the entire painting. In this depiction the men are overseeing the final processes of the manufacturing of the 1932 Ford V-8 which was the premier vehicle of the year.

Diego Rivera
RIvera was very attracted to the United States. He was fascinated by the sky scrapers, bridges, and concrete highways. Rivera proclaimed, while gazing at the Equitable Tower in Manhattan, New York that the workers and engineers were influenced by the ancient people of Yucatan who built the ancient temples. He later made an acquaintance with William Gerstle through a mutual friend, Ralph Stackpole. Gerstle at first was not fond of Rivera's paintings but after analyzing his work in more depth he decided he did in fact admire his work. It was Gerstle who made arrangements for Rivera to paint at the Califronia School of Fine Arts in San Francisco for $1,500. Rivera then worked on the Detroit Murals and then worked on a mural at the Rockefeller Center in New York City for which he was reprimanded. During his project at the Rockefeller center, Rivera who would usually work with almost no restrictions and with few guidelines decided to form a portrayal of Nicolai Lenin. Rivera neglected the wishes of his commissioner which resulted in his expulsion of the project and the destruction of his nearly finished work.

Controversy
Major controversy arose when the murals were finally viewed by the pubic. Rivera painted the murals during the harshest times of the Great Depression. The wage of workers went down by 54 percent and auto production also declined by 75 percent. During the years of the project's production half of Detroit workers were unemployed and the working class had begun to take action. In fact, in march of 1932 there was a huge march of about 5,000 workers that marched to Ford's River Rouge led by the Detroit Unemployed Council. The march was known as The Hunger March. During this time there was much social and political turmoil that caused the painting to create tension and allowed it to become a political ordeal named by Rivera as the Battle of Detroit. Having admitted to be a Marxist and a former member of the Communist Party, Rivera's murals stirred up a lot of opinions. During the completion of the murals many conservative community leaders began to attack Rivera and suggest that the paintings were used for Marxist or communist propaganda and that the murals were anti-religous and offensive. Some believed the scenes shown were far to provocative for a museum and others thought that the murals would have been better in a location not so easily viewed by the public. Art critics and labor sympathizers, however, defended the images and Rivera. The commissioners also backed the project which eventually lead to the settling down of the uproar.