[1] On April 23, 2014, the Detroit Industry Murals were designated by the Department of Interior as a National Historic Landmark.

[2] The two main panels on the North and South walls depict laborers working at Ford Motor Company's River Rouge Plant.

Excerpt from commission proposal to Rivera from Valentiner: ... to help us beautify the museum and give fame to its hall through your great work ...

[3] The official Rouge plant photographer, W. J. Stettler, aided Rivera's search for visual reference material.

Rivera completed the commission in eight months, a relatively short amount of time for such a large and complex work.

In Detroit one out of four laborers were unemployed, and workers at the Ford Motor Company were agitating for improvements to pay and conditions.

In addition, Detroit had factories that produced diverse goods and commodities ranging from steel, electric power, and cement.

The two largest murals, on the north and south walls of the court, are considered the climax to the narrative that Rivera depicted in the total of 27 panels.

The north wall puts the worker at center and depicts the manufacturing process of Ford's famous 1932 V8 engine.

On the opposite side of the north wall, Rivera depicts the manufacturing process of the exterior automobile parts, focusing on technology as an important quality of the future.

One panel on the North wall features a Christ-like child figure with golden hair reminiscent of a halo.

This part of the fresco is clearly a modern take on traditional images of the holy family, but some critics interpret it as parody rather than homage.

[5] Some art historians have suggested that Rivera's patron Edsel Ford stoked the controversy to generate publicity about the artwork.

[5] At its unveiling, this panel so offended some members of Detroit's religious community that they demanded it be destroyed, but commissioner Edsel Ford and DIA Director Wilhelm Valentiner held firm.

He came from Mexico to Detroit, thought our mass production industries and our technology wonderful and very exciting, painted them as one of the great achievements of the twentieth century.