VIRTUOSO JAZZ BASSIST AND EDUCATOR MARION HAYDEN NAMED 2025 KRESGE EMINENT ARTIST
Award-winning jazz bassist, educator, and mentor Marion Hayden has officially added the 2025 Kresge Eminent Artist award to her long list of achievements. The annual award is regarded as metro Detroit’s highest arts honor.
“I’m not a person who finds herself speechless much,’’ Hayden said of the award and its accompanying $100,000 cash prize, “but this is a real moment, kind of hard to process when you’re just out doing the work, doing what you love.’’
The 17th metro Detroiter to receive the honor for lifetime artistic achievement and contributions to the region’s cultural communities, Hayden becomes the youngest Kresge Eminent Artist at age 68; the second recipient to have previously received a Kresge Artist Fellowship (2016).
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Photos by Erin Kirkland for The Kresge Foundation
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Photos by Erin Kirkland for The Kresge Foundation
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Photos by Erin Kirkland for The Kresge Foundation
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Photos by Erin Kirkland for The Kresge Foundation
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Photos by Erin Kirkland for The Kresge Foundation
Along with the monetary prize, Hayden’s life and career will be the subject of a short film and a monograph slated for release later this year. “I credit Detroit and its artists and its wonderful creative culture for so much of who I am,’’ she said. “We have such a strong community. It’s still my muse.’’
“Marion Hayden is the third jazz musician and the first of her generation to receive this award. Like Wendell Harrison and the late Marcus Belgrave before her, she upholds and extends a rich Detroit legacy as an artist and generously passes on to younger musicians what has been passed on to her,” said Kresge President Rip Rapson. “And, like all our Kresge Eminent Artists, she exemplifies how the arts ground and build a community, manifesting the powers of creativity to connect us.”
I credit Detroit and its artists and its wonderful creative culture for so much of who I am. We have such a strong community. It’s still my muse.
Marion Hayden
2025 Kresge Eminent Artist and 2016 Kresge Artist Fellow
In addition to Belgrave and Harrison, previous recipients have been opera impresario David DiChiera and harpist Patricia Terry Ross; authors Bill Harris, Naomi Long Madgett, Gloria House and Melba Joyce Boyd; photographers Leni Sinclair and Bill Rauhasuer; and visual artists Charles McGee, Ruth Adler Schnee, Marie Woo, Shirley Woodson, Olayami Dabls, and Nora Chapa Mendoza.
Read the full story by Nichole Christian on The Kresge Foundation’s website.