The Whiting

The Whiting Auditorium in Flint, Michigan, opened in 1967 and is part of the city's Cultural Center. The 2,043-seat venue is named after James H. Whiting, an industrialist associated with the Flint Wagon Works and the early history of Buick. A renovation in 1999 updated the auditorium's facilities. The Whiting serves as the home of the Flint Symphony Orchestra and presents touring Broadway productions, dance and other live performances. Its history also includes work with Flint's youth theatre. The auditorium's combination of resident orchestral activity and visiting productions places it within the wider educational and performing programme of the Flint Institute of Music. Flint's Cultural Center began with an idea of C. S. Mott's in the 1940s: thirty-three acres set aside beside the college for a museum, a planetarium, an art institute and a concert hall. The Whiting is that concert hall. It belongs today to the Flint Institute of Music, which also runs the Flint Symphony Orchestra — the auditorium's resident ensemble — together with a school of performing arts and a repertory theatre. Touring productions and orchestral concerts share the stage through the season.