Uniquely Detroit: Nick Cave’s Sound Suits | WDIV-Detroit

Cranbrook Art Museum Director Greg Wittkopp discusses Nick Cave’s Hear Hear project, with footage of the Heard•Detroit rehearsal and performance.

Coming to Cranbrook Nov. 21: ‘3-D installation’ of Lou Reed’s 1975 feedback masterpiece ‘Metal Machine Music’ | Detroit Metro Times

“Coming to Cranbrook Nov. 21: '3-D installation' of Lou Reed's 1975 feedback masterpiece 'Metal Machine Music” by Mike McGonigal, Detroit Metro Times"This is the best news for fans of immersive sound, the Velvet Underground, and trip metal. Surely, we've all at least heard of Metal Machine Music by now. Once critically reviled, in time it's come to be understood as an important if idiosyncratic link between 1960s minimalism in New York and later developments in industrial and noise musics. As a teenager, I spent the better part of one summer listening to Metal Machine Music, daily (or as close to daily as I could, because family members did not share my enthusiasm for this overlapping collage of manipulated guitar feedback). It began as a challenge, and ended with me finding all kinds of pretty little seagull-sounding flourishes and repeated melodic themes inside of what at first seemed to be an uncompromising and indiscriminate wall of squealing shit. "

Tagged: Chris Scoates, Exhibitions, Lou Reed, Music

Experiencing Architecture Through ‘Hippie Modernism’ and Retrospectives | New York Times

In 1965, four artists bought seven acres in southeastern Colorado, intending to make live-in works of art. Their communal project came to be known as Drop City, where residents lived in zonohedron domes of their own creation, sometimes constructed of automobile roofs and other scavenged materials. One dome, made of a fluorescent-painted lattice filled in […]

Nick Cave’s ‘Soundsuits’ Hit Detroit | Women’s Wear Daily

Can art help invigorate Detroit? Nick Cave, who considers himself a messenger first and artist second, thinks so.Cave, the performance artist best known for his vibrant soundsuits that have been cited for inspiring the collections of designers like Kenzo and reside in the homes of celebrity art collectors like Jay Z and Beyoncé, says the timing was right for “Here Hear,” his current and longest-running solo exhibit at Cranbrook Art Museum in Detroit, which closes Oct. 11.

Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum Announce Leadership Changes

Bloomfield Hills, Mich., Aug. 26, 2015 – Christopher Scoates, the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Director of Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum, announced a series of leadership changes today at both the Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum.

Tagged: Andrew Blauvelt, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research, Gregory Wittkopp, Scott Winter

#LOVEMYCITY: DETROIT | Shinola

As part of our #LoveMyCity campaign, we’ve been asking creators and influencers all across America to tell us what makes their towns so special, by using the hashtag #LoveMyCity. Pride, we feel, is something that drives culture, style, and, for us, it’s the lifeblood of a maker and manufacturer. And while Nick Cave isn’t from southeast Michigan — Detroit, the artist says, “gave him his soul” as a performer.It’s a hot day in August; Nick Cave and his creative partner, Bob Faust, have met us at the entrance to the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, MI, to tour Cave’s 7,000-square-foot solo exhibition and performance program, Here Hear. It’s hours before the final performance of Here Hear’s live dance series, Dance Lab, the museum installation is coming to a close October 11th, and Cave is feeling nostalgic.“We feel we’re reintroducing Detroit to Detroit,” says Cave. “Because at these events we’re shocked at the overwhelming support that has been coming out.”

A Summery Splash of Color: Art abounds around metro Detroit to wrap up season | C & G Newspapers

Just in time to bid farewell to summer, Cranbrook Art Museum is getting ready to celebrate the close of its Michigan-made exhibit, “Designing Summer: Objects of Escape.”According to Shelley Selim, assistant curator of the Jeanne and Ralph Graham Collections at Cranbrook, the show highlights the tradition of outdoor fun in Michigan during the summer.“It all sort of materialized when we received a gift of 20 picnic posters designed by Steve Fryholm, who graduated from the (Cranbrook Academy of Art) and worked for Herman Miller,” she said. “(The posters) advertise the annual company picnic; they’re beautiful and incredibly graphic images of summer picnic food like sweet corn, grilled chicken, fruit salad and lemonade. They’re all silk-screened with flat layers of color. They’re just spectacular, and we thought we needed an exhibition for these.”

Tagged: Designing Summer, Exhibitions, Michigan, Shelley Selim

“Designing Summer: Objects of Escape” featured on Ixiti.com

Whether along one of the Great Lakes, any of the numerous inland lakes, or the Detroit Riverfront, it is an undeniable fact that Michiganders spend their summer by the water. Going Up North is a standard phrase, and an even more common occurrence, whether for a long weekend or a week’s vacation. These locations epitomize the summer goal of escape, of leaving one’s cares (and responsibilities) behind. Designing Summer: Objects of Escape at the Cranbrook Art Museum through August 30th traces the evolution of the modern concept of summer vacations in Michigan, and how many of the objects that contribute to this notion of leisure time have their roots in Michigan.

Tagged: Designing Summer, Exhibition, Michigan, Pipsan Saarinan, Shelley Selim

14 Top Mid Century Modern Homes You Can Tour | In Collect

Designed by the highly influential architect Eliel Saarinen in the 1920s, this Art Deco masterpiece sits on the campus of the Cranbrook Art Museum. From 1930 through 1950, the structure served as the home and studio of Saarinen, Cranbrook’s first resident architect and the Cranbrook Academy of Art’s inaugural president and head of the Architecture […]

Tagged: Eliel Saarinen, Saarinen House, Tours

Nick Cave’s delicate balancing act in Detroit | Detroit Metro Times

I stood at the entrance of the Dequindre Cut Lafayette Park overpass, a few steps away from the Mies van der Rohe Historic District where I reside. I looked over the small bridge into the Dequindre valley shortly after checking my iPhone for the time. It was 4:01 p.m. on a hot July Sunday in Detroit. A Nick Cave Soundsuit performance was set to take place in Detroit’s Dequindre Cut, a relatively new pathway where the city’s residents can run and jog at leisure.Two figures in Cave’s handmade Soundsuits galloped down one of the entry ramps onto the Dequindre Cut; one in black and one in white, dancing angelically. The materials on the Soundsuit garments were draped effortlessly — like long, and thick strands of hair — as the dancers gracefully gallop up and down in the humid summer air. A live band playing “toy pop” lead by composer Frank Pahl preceded the dancers.