The Scarab Club is a private artists' club founded in 1907 and housed in a 1928 building next to the Detroit Institute of Arts. The ground floor has a gallery with rotating exhibitions, generally open to the public free. The famous Beam Room upstairs is the inner sanctum, and the walls and beams carry signatures of essentially every important artist who passed through Detroit in the 20th century. Public tours of the upstairs are occasional but worth catching.
Closed Mondays. The exterior alone — with its bronze scarab over the door — is worth a stop after the DIA next door.