In the early 20th century, a group of Detroiters met to critique paintings over dinner and drinks. The group eventually named themselves The Scarab Club. Since then, the Detroit artists’ club and gallery has played an important part in the city’s art scene.
Today, the club is still a resource for Detroit artists and maintains a mission of fostering a more vibrant arts community in the city. But its newest gallery manager, Donna Jackson, is also focused on creating a space where art feels accessible—whether you're making it or looking at it. Jackson is the first Black woman to manage the Scarab Club gallery in its 100-plus year history.
Art has always been Jackson’s calling, she said, but she actually stumbled upon the Scarab Club by accident. After visiting the Detroit Institute of Arts one day, she wasn’t ready to go home. So she instead followed someone into a nearby building.
“When I went in, and I saw a gallery, and then I learned that this was a club, it was membership-based—it was all of these things,” she said. “From that point on, it stayed on my radar.”
A few years later, Jackson was asked to do a workshop on resumes for the Scarab Club.
“I just became part of the family, and here I am now, like literally part of the team,” Jackson said.
As a shy child, Jackson used drawing and art as a way to express herself. That love of art was fostered by both her parents and her teachers in Detroit Public Schools. But Jackson didn't initially see working in the art world as a viable career.
She also excelled at science and math in school. And so, when she became a freshman at Western Michigan University, Jackson initially was intent on studying chemical engineering.
“But art, the visual arts and even music, were always in the background sustaining me as I was doing these structural things that you're ‘supposed’ to do to create a career for yourself,” she said. “I didn't understand that I could do both, or that I could truly make a career in the arts.”
Jackson spent most of her career in nonprofit work as a graphic designer and brand manager. While working at the Houston Public Library in 2006, Jackson tried her hand at curating projects.
“While there, I would hear so much news about my hometown, about Detroit,” Jackson said. “It was crazy, and a lot of the news was about Detroit coming back.”
Jackson was excited to hear of the city’s revival, she said, but she never saw her friends, who were Detroit culture creators and artists, getting recognition.
“I would never see them in the stories that I was seeing, so I knew that the nation was getting not the whole story of Detroit,” she said. “I felt I needed to change that, and part of the way I did that was through developing projects that used art.”
Jackson said she believes “art has this brand of being for a particular class of people, and that is the rich.”
She is proud of the way Detroit is breaking that brand, and wants the Scarab Club to be part of that work.
“What we have been doing is making things like membership more accessible, creating exhibitions that look and feel more like Metro Detroit,” Jackson explained. “People like me becoming part of the team and that are Detroiters, that are artists, that have a passion for not only art, but community. “
Over the past century, artists like Diego Rivera, Marcel Duchamp, and Norman Rockwell have visited the Scarab Club. Jackson is invested in telling their stories, as well as the stories of the artists who are shaping Detroit today.
“One thing that I'm very interested in is more storytelling...sharing more stories about the artists of Detroit through the Scarab Club lens,” Jackson said. “So many artists have come through those doors over these 100 years or 100-plus years, but knowing those that came before and knowing extraordinary artists that are here now, I want to help tell more of their stories.”
