Shaping the Field: Ceramics at Cranbrook Academy of Art

Ceramics has been foundational to Cranbrook Academy of Art since its inception. In 1928, founder George Gough Booth established arts and crafts workshops that included ceramics. In 1938, Finnish-born artist Maija Grotell was appointed as head of the department at Cranbrook Academy of Art, which would prove a serendipitous move. Though Academy President Eliel Saarinen insisted on an equivalence between the […]

Drawing in Thread: Olga de Amaral and Anne Wilson

Acclaimed artists Olga de Amaral (b. 1932; Weaving, 1954–55) and Anne Wilson (b. 1946; BFA Fiber, 1972) both studied in the renowned Fiber program at Cranbrook Academy of Art nearly 20 years apart. Featuring selections from Cranbrook Art Museum’s collection, Drawing in Thread references their shared interest in exploring architectural space and celebrating the most elemental component of fiber: the thread.  […]

Designing Cranbrook: The Saarinens’ Eclectic Vision

In 1925, George Gough Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth, the founders of Cranbrook, invited Finnish-born architect Eliel Saarinen to begin transforming their country estate into an ambitious campus of educational, artistic, and scientific inquiry. The endeavor was a collaborative project shaped by the Saarinen family, including sculptor and textile artist Loja Saarinen and their children, Pipsan and […]

Monumental Color: Cecily Brown, Sam Gilliam, and Joan Mitchell

Monumental Color: Cecily Brown, Sam Gilliam, and Joan Mitchell brings together significant artworks by three quintessential Abstract artists. The exhibition showcases the museum’s holdings of these artists alongside loans from the Masterworks Foundation, an initiative to share one of the largest private collections in contemporary art with public audiences. It will spotlight Cranbrook Art Museum’s […]

Tagged: 2026

The World of Anna Sui

Born and raised in metro Detroit, Anna Sui reinvented fashion and pop culture with her signature rock-and-roll romantic label in the 1990s and has remained an artistic fashion icon ever since. The World of Anna Sui at Cranbrook Art Museum represents the international American fashion designer’s return to the city, a cultural hub of rock […]

Akea Brionne: A Dreaming Hour

Based in Metro Detroit, Akea Brionne (b. 1996) is an interdisciplinary research-driven artist working at the intersection of lens and fiber-based media. Her practice explores the relationship between colonial and imperialist histories and their reverberations into cultural storytelling, identity politics, and assimilation. Through observations focusing on the African Diaspora with a particular interest in Afro […]

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Labyrinth/Laboratory: Selections from the Cranbrook Collection 

Labyrinth/Laboratory: Selections from the Cranbrook Collection presents work by alumni and faculty of Cranbrook Academy of Art, drawn from Cranbrook Art Museum’s permanent collection of over 8,000 objects. Largely focused on work produced since the 1960s, Labyrinth/Laboratory: Selections from the Cranbrook Collection places into dialogue various aesthetic, material, and conceptual connections across time by Academy […]

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Surreal Creatures Gather at Michigan’s Cranbrook Art Museum | T Magazine