We left Belle Isle and went to near downtown Detroit to the Institute of Arts (formerly the Detroit Art Museum). Pictures are not allowed in the museum if you use flash (and unless you use flash the image is worthless) so all these are from the internet.
The first image is an iron Buddha from 8th century Korea -- most Buddha heads are stone or plaster and an iron statue in the 8th century was quite unique.
The second and third image are from Rivera Court. The murals are 30' or so high and a hundred feet long and show scenes from the industrial peak of Detroit. The style of art is called "Industrial" or "Industrial - Mexican". The artist, Diego Rivera was particularly proud of it. The murals are frescoes (paint is applied to a wet plaster surface). The frescoes were done in the 1930s and they essentially say that Industry was the culture of Detroit at that time. Rivera, who was a communist at heart, put some subversive scene in his art (his depiction of bosses is very unflattering while he shows many workers as heroic). The images are from the linked website.
Another area of the museum that is impressive is the Great Hall (4th image - I used a website from a news story of the possible sale of the museum per the city's bankruptcy). This area of the museum was redone and restored in 2013 or so.
I had some difficulty parking at the museum since the lots were closed - all they had was street parking with no more than 2 hours or in some cases one hour with fare machines that sometimes didn't work, so I ended up parallel parking about 4 times in 4 hours.
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