Eastern Market is a globally known street-art destination, and one of its most beloved walls is Detroit artist Desiree Kelly’s tribute to the Queen of Soul. Awash in pink tones — a nod to Aretha Franklin’s “Freeway of Love” pink Cadillac — the mural beams the hometown icon out over the market district. (It’s one of several Aretha murals around the city, only fitting for one of Detroit’s very own.)
It’s a quick, joyful stop amid the produce sheds and the hundred-plus other works splashed across Eastern Market’s warehouses — and, like the Stevie Wonder mural, a natural companion to the Motown trail, since the Queen of Soul’s Detroit story runs from her father’s LaSalle Boulevard home to the Palmer Woods estate she named for her roses.