D Makes The Paper!

My friend Devon has been working as a curator/researcher at the new Arab American museum in Dearborn since it's inception. Now that it's been a year, things seem to been going strong.

From the Detroit News:

Today, the 35,800-square-foot museum enjoys a steady stream of more than 1,000 visitors per week.
"It's like you were in the Middle East, in one of these fancy architectural places," Freij said.
The first floor of the museum features a permanent exhibit on the Arab civilization and its contributions to science, medicine, mathematics and astronomy, as well as Arab architecture and decorative arts.
The second floor includes thematic galleries focusing on immigration from 1500 to the present, especially since the 1800s. Museum curators collected items for these exhibits from Arab-Americans across the United States. The collection includes historic documents, personal remembrances and artifacts that tell countless stories immigrants.
The museum also borrows from other museums' collections for special displays. A special exhibit of Kahlil Gibran's illustrations is currently on display through the end of April.
The museum's own collections include about 1,000 items, according to Devon Ackmon, curator of research. Nearly everything in the museum is authentic, as opposed to a reproduction.
"If you see a suitcase, it will be the suitcase of an immigrant," said Ackmon said. "The beauty of this is it's really a community thing, where the artifacts came from people in the community and not just from a collector.
"It feels like it's owned by the community, because they've contributed to it and made it theirs."

Nice one, D! Too bad they misspelled your last name. Typical.