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A minute-long commercial touting the importance of classic and contemporary art has been updated for its 50th anniversary.
The Detroit Institute of Art’s original 1976 “You Gotta Have Art!” video featured local actors and personalities in front of various masterpieces throughout the world-renowned museum. Many Metro Detroiters still remember seeing the ads throughout the 1970s.
To mark the 50th anniversary of the memorable spot, the DIA has released a modern version. It features a new cast and a new recording of the song “You Gotta Have Art,” which is a spoof on the song “You Gotta Have Heart” from the 1955 Broadway musical “Damn Yankees.”
The museum’s director of visual media, Adam Kosberg, said he heard about the ad within a week of him starting his job at the DIA a few years ago. People started asking him if he had seen “Gotta Have Art!” or knew about it. He found a low-res version on YouTube.
“I was immediately captivated by it and sort of understood why almost 50 years later it still had this resonance among people,” he said. “I ran into people that say they still find themselves humming and singing it 50 years later.”
“With this year being the 50th anniversary of it, I kind of realized I was never going to have a better justification, if you will, to recreate it. It was sort of now or never,” he said.
He proposed the idea of re-shooting the video and got almost immediate approval. That was a year ago. It’s taken him around 12 months to plan and bring the project to fruition.
“It was unlike most film projects. You know, 95% of the work is done in post-production. With this one, it was about 95 or maybe even 98% in pre-production,” said Kosberg, who started filming about two months ago. “It was finding the costumes and the props and the casting and the coordinating … everything that goes into putting it together.”
The original was filmed over a two-day period at the museum with an 80-member cast featuring museum personnel, volunteers and members of local theater groups.
Krosberg says the new 60-second video for “You Gotta Have Art!” has 24 separate shots and features more than 200 people.
Along with DIA staff members and volunteers, eagle-eyed art fans will recognize a dozen locally based creatives, including Allie McGee, Carole Harris, Mario Moore, Tylonn Sawyer and Kresge Eminent Artist and Detroit News Michiganian of the Year Shirley Woodson. Members of the Wayne State Theatre and Dance department and Detroit Jit Dancers were also involved, and Detroit musicians Marion Hayden and Alvin Waddles recorded an updated version of the song with more of a Motown feel to it.
“The film is a celebration of art, obviously, and of the museum, but I think it’s also sort of a celebration of Detroit, and Detroit art and culture, music and dance,” he said. “So it’s important to sort of incorporate all those elements into the film along with staff.”
The plans for the updated video, at the moment, is just to share it online. Since posting it to Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, the spot has gotten more than a quarter of a million views across those platforms, which everyone is very happy about.
“We’ll see, maybe we’ll think about this year, maybe doing some television as well,” he said. “But for now, we’re just focused on the social media component.”
mbaetens@detroitnews.com
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