Thirteen years ago today, we set out from Toronto on the Great Art Road Trip: 49 museums in five weeks, starting with the Detroit Institute of Arts. Crossing the border came naturally then, but we had an anxious moment when the guard asked if we had any citrus fruit.

Well, what do you know? A bag of clementines we’d forgotten to pitch. The ensuing lecture conjured grim fantasies of detainment, but the keeper of our fates waved us on with a warning. We were tootling toward Detroit when something soft rolled against my ankle—a clementine, and then another. No fruit ever tasted sweeter than those contraband clementines.

I could still taste mine when we strolled into the museum to find ourselves surrounded, awed and enraptured by Diego Rivera’s monumental tribute to Detroit autoworkers and Aztec cosmology. Only in America would the president of the Ford Motor Company engage a Mexican Communist to celebrate the spirit of his city with unabashed socialist fire. Edsel Ford not only stood firm in the face of protests, he doubled the scope of the project. Such a thing could happen in 1932.

Of all the countries we’ve visited, the U.S. was, until now, the destination closest to our hearts. Of all our American adventures, the Great Art Road Trip tops the list. I’ll tell you more in an upcoming post that will take a bit of time to finish. First we have to get away for a while. We picked Mexico, home to quite a few murals by Diego Rivera. His finest—in his view and ours—is in Detroit.