GM Turns Its New Detroit HQ Lobby Into a Free Concept Car Gallery
The Buick Wildcat, Cadillac Sollei, and GMC Hummer X pickup share floor space with local artists' work at Hudson's Detroit — free through November 1.
General Motors has turned the street-level lobby of its new Detroit headquarters into a free art gallery. The Art + Cars exhibit, now open at Entrance One inside Hudson's Detroit, puts three of the company's recent concept vehicles — the Buick Wildcat, Cadillac Sollei, and GMC Hummer X pickup — on display alongside original work by 11 local artists.
Produced with real estate firm Bedrock and Detroit collective ArtClvb, the show runs through November 1 and is open daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at 1232 Woodward Avenue. Admission is free.
Three concepts, four years of design work
Seeing all three vehicles in one room is a rare opportunity. The Wildcat, a low-slung 2+2 coupe first shown in June 2022, set the design direction Buick has since carried into its production lineup. The Sollei, revealed in July 2024, is a coach-built electric convertible spun off the hand-built Celestiq sedan. The Hummer X pickup is the newest of the group, unveiled this past May at the opening of GM's Advanced Design studio in Pasadena, California — a design study the automaker says won't reach production in its current form.
Each car wears unique colors, materials, and finishes, and GM is presenting them less as future products than as objects that belong next to paintings and sculpture.
A $250,000 grant and a Sheeler for the DIA
The exhibit opening came with two other announcements. GM is giving $250,000 to Detroit's College for Creative Studies to fund youth and precollege programs — hands-on STEAM education, college prep, and career exploration. The automaker has worked with CCS, a key pipeline for its design studios, for more than 30 years, and puts its total support at over $18 million.
GM is also lending Charles Sheeler's 1956 painting General Motors Research to the Detroit Institute of Arts for the next decade. Commissioned for the opening of the Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, the canvas depicts the Research Administration building's spiral staircase, the Centri-Filmer vaccine-purifying machine, and what GM calls its "mechanical heart," which the company says was used in the first successful open-heart surgery.
The push comes eight months after GM moved its headquarters from the Renaissance Center to Hudson's Detroit, built on the site of the old J.L. Hudson department store. Entrance One, named after the store's original employee entrance, was designed from the start as a public showroom — and the company clearly wants foot traffic. GM has leaned on its design heritage before: it credits itself with the industry's first dedicated styling department, the Art and Colour Section founded under Harley Earl in 1927, and the first concept car, the 1938 Buick Y-Job.
After November 1, Entrance One returns to its rotating display of Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and GMC vehicles.
