Viranel Clerard, a community art advocate and photojournalist, is an educator for the Heidelberg Arts Leadership Academy, and founder of the Detroit Mural Project; a digital catalog of 1000+ public art murals in the city of Detroit. With an Iphone and a passion for Detroit’s art scene, Clerard devotes his time between jobs to the curation of the Detroit Mural Project; illuminating historical evidence of Detroit’s narrative in a rapidly changing landscape. Born in Hudson, NY and raised on the eastside of Detroit to two Haitian immigrants, Viranel Clerard worked his way from the ground up to a front-page writer of the Detroit News. In 2013, Clerard moved to Ann Arbor, MI to pursue a degree in Fine Art at U-M’s Penny Stamps School of Art & Design; where he learned the importance of working collaboratively and developing strong social networks. In 2015, he left U-M to create the Detroit Mural Project, now one of the largest and most ambitious region specific public art archives in the country.
Within six months of launching a live version of his website (
DetroitMurals.com) Viranel Clerard is now navigating the art world and bumping shoulders with political influencers. His work has been featured in The Detroit News, WDIV, Curbed, NBC News, Metro Times, BLAC Detroit, and more.
This years’ plenary will take the format of a live interview, with ample opportunity for audience questions. To facilitate the interview, we welcome Michael Smith, the Johanna Meijer Magoon Principal Archivist, Michigan Historical Collections at the Bentley Historical Library.
