Marcus Jones and Akunna Olumba kept noticing the same problem: Detroit had almost no galleries showing work by Black artists. So when they opened Detroit Pizza Bar in 2022, they decided to fix it themselves.
The restaurant's second floor became something between a pizzeria and a gallery. Jones designed the lighting specifically for artwork—downlights that would highlight paintings the way a proper gallery would. He painted the walls light and bright, stripped away the restaurant clutter, and created a space that feels like you're walking into a curated show, not a dining room.
"I wanted the space to feel like a gallery," Jones said. "So the lights upstairs are designed specifically to have downlights so that we could hang artwork and photos."
We're a new kind of news feed.
Regular news is designed to drain you. We're a non-profit built to restore you. Every story we publish is scored for impact, progress, and hope.
Start Your News DetoxNow the walls rotate through work by local Black artists like Conrad Egyir, Olivia Indigo, and Joshua Thaddeus Rainer. Many pieces are for sale. You come for pizza, you leave with a painting. The line between restaurant and gallery blurs completely.
What started at one pizza bar is spreading across Detroit's Black-owned restaurant scene. Yum Village, an Afro-Caribbean spot, displays work by muralist Bakpak Durden. See You Tomorrow, a breakfast place, features a vivid phoenix mural by Cameron Jenkins that greeted customers from day one.
Julian Hill, who owns See You Tomorrow, watched the mural transform how people experienced his space. "That phoenix symbolizes the struggles and the rise of Detroit, our entrepreneurs and our people," he said. "The mural 100% gave us that belief when we were trying to open — it transformed the entire place. It represents growth, positivity and transformation."
What Jones and Olumba figured out is simple but powerful: the gallery doesn't have to be separate from life. It can be where you eat breakfast. Where you order a drink. Where community gathers anyway. In a city where dedicated art spaces for Black artists have been scarce, restaurants are becoming the venues that were missing.
