In No Particular Order features new work made within Ian McDonald’s first year as Artist-in-Residence and Head of the Ceramics department at Cranbrook Academy of Art. The exhibition continues Ian’s interest in displacing the hierarchy within the objects created in his studio. Ranging in scale and built through multiple processes, forms balance between sculpture and design, coexisting in a state of equilibrium. An accomplished ceramicist, McDonald’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States, Europe and Japan. His work has appeared in numerous publications including Art Forum, Metropolis, Wallpaper magazine, Ceramics Monthly, Dwell and The New York Times. In No Particular Order: New Work by Ian McDonald is organized by Cranbrook Art Museum and curated by Jon P. Geiger. The exhibition is supported by members of the Museum Committee and ArtMembers at Cranbrook. Generous support for exhibitions and programs at Cranbrook Art Museum is provided by the Maxine and Stuart Frankel ...
Read MoreA creative outlet for many street artists, illustrators, and graphic designers, art toys emerged in the late 1990s in Asia before becoming a collecting phenomenon in the United States in the early 2000s. Produced in limited editions, designer art toys take the form of a child’s plaything, but are collected by adults, who value these objects for their expressive and formal qualities. Although they can be made from a variety of materials, the most common toys are made of hard and soft plastics, such as vinyl and resin. The genre is known for the range of its figures, from darkly comic cartoon-like characters and fun yet strange anthropomorphic animals to urban vinyl that draws upon hip-hop, rap, and graffiti culture. Wild Vinyl: Designer Art Toys showcases a variety of designer toys from individual sculptural figures to outlandish monsters, and will focus on limited edition artist creations and serial productions. Like prints ...
Tagged: designer toys, toys
Read MoreA Portrait of True Red (2016) is a first-person narrative told by Sam Jones, a fictional character who merges with a pair of Nike’s “True Red Vampire” sneakers (Dunk Low Pro SB, 2003). Her story weaves together historical accounts and contemporary texts from numerous sources, including: Tacky’s Rebellion, a slave uprising in Jamaica (1760); police brutality towards Black Panther member Assata Shakur; violence against factory workers in contemporary China; and excerpts from Nike advertising copy and product reviews. Minimally staged against a backdrop of cast shadows that recall the bodily gestures and athletic poses from Nike commercials, the protagonist dons a pair of the vermillion trainers while relating a tale of vampiric colonialism and the violence of subjugation. Dean’s work examines the construction and commodification of race, gender, age, and class, while exploring themes of colonialism and global capital, often by blending fiction and reality and blurring subject and object. Danielle Dean ...
Tagged: Danielle Dean
Read MoreIn the studio of Chicago-based painter McArthur Binion, a handwritten note has been pinned to the wall for a decade that reads “Binion/Saarinen.” The artist’s initial concept was to create a painting inspired by architect Eliel Saarinen and his design of Cranbrook’s historic campus, where Binion received his MFA in Painting in 1973 and received the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2017. This early spark of inspiration will come to fruition at Cranbrook Art Museum and expanded through the creation of seven new works alongside a selection of Saarinen objects curated by the artist. Binion’s interest in the noted architect and campus is consistent with his artistic strategy that mines his personal history. One of his most prominent series of paintings is titled DNA, which he wittily says could stand for “… Distinct Neurological Advancement, or Detroit Negro Artist…”, yet either interpretation can be understood as an important origin of his human ...
Read MoreTo view all of our exhibitions for free, purchase a museum membership!Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die: Punk Graphics, 1976-1986, explores the unique visual language of the punk movement from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s through hundreds of its most memorable graphics–flyers, posters, albums, promotions, and zines. Since its rebellious inception in the 1970s, punk has always exhibited very visual forms of expression, from the dress and hairstyles of its devotees and the on-stage theatrics of its musicians to the graphic design of its numerous forms of printed matter. As such punk’s energy coalesced into a powerful subcultural phenomena that transcended music to affect other fields such as visual art and design. Arranged thematically, the exhibition is the largest of its kind, and it explores various visual design strategies and techniques, such as appropriation, collage, parody, and pastiche, as well as the influences of genres such as science fiction, horror, and ...
Tagged: 2018, Shepherd Fairey
Read MoreDrawn from its holdings of more than 6,000 objects of art, design, and craft, Cranbrook Art Museum presents True to Form: Selections from the Permanent Collection. The exhibition includes celebrated favorites alongside newly-acquired works debuting for the first time. True to Form explores three artistic actions—Capture, Distill, and Disrupt—to make exciting new connections between artworks that span different time periods, materials, genres, and movements. Andy Warhol’s Polaroids of art world glitterati are placed alongside Duane Hanson’s life-like Bodybuilder sculpture; a Harry Bertoia architectural wall relief is complemented by Susan Goethel Campbell’s stark black & white city nightscape, and many more. The exhibition will be on long-term view. Capture focuses on how artists represent moments from life in both time-based and traditional art materials. For example, Andy Warhol’s Polaroids of art world glitterati are placed alongside Duane Hanson’s joltingly life-like Bodybuider sculpture, thereby unveiling a paradox on realism and authenticity. Distill explores ...
Tagged: 2018
Read MoreOpen now! In August of 2017, Ryan McGinness worked with Bedrock, the Quicken Loans Community Investment Fund (QLCIF), Tony Hawk and Library Street Collective to produce Wayfinding, an art installation and skate park in the city of Detroit. The park was designed by Tony Hawk, and built by George Leichtweis of Modern Skate and Surf. Located on the site of the future Monroe Blocks development, the area bounded by Randolph Street, Bates Street, Cadillac Square and Monroe Avenue, Wayfinding opened to the public on Wednesday, August 16. The park is scheduled to remain open until Monroe Blocks construction begins, currently slated for January 2018. Wayfinding’s functional and mobile design will allow it to move to another location in the city following the Monroe Blocks groundbreaking. As part of Cranbrook Art Museum’s participation, we have partnered with Ryan Myers-Johnson, Director of the Sidewalk Festival of Performing Arts, to produce two on-site live performances. They ...
Read MoreCranbrook Art Museum presents Liquor Store Theatre Performance Films by Detroit-based artist Maya Stovall, an innovator who works across the disciplines of dance, theory, anthropology, ethnography, and contemporary art. The museum will feature films from this series of site-specific dance interventions that began in 2014, as well as premiere a new film created in summer 2017 for the exhibition. In Liquor Store Theatre, Stovall situates her stage in the public parking lots, sidewalks, and streets in front of liquor stores in her McDougall-Hunt neighborhood in Detroit. In an area with few operating storefronts, the liquor stores have become the de-facto centers of commerce, including groceries and electronics, and a place for residents to socialize. The unannounced performances include herself and several dancers that perform a meditative-style of ballet and jazz with the occasional bystander joining in the movement. Beyond the dancer’s bodies, the performance ruptures the stilted choreography of daily life ...
Read MoreCranbrook: A New Domestic Landscape examines the role of designed objects that define and animate our interior environments. The exhibition features contemporary furniture and furnishings by recent alumni and Artists-in-Residence of Cranbrook Academy of Art that challenge conventions of use, explore new materials and techniques, and blur the boundaries between art, craft, and design. Long a hotbed of experimental design, Cranbrook has played an important role in envisioning artifacts for living—from the handcrafted production of the Arts and Crafts period and the birth of mid-century modernism in America to the art furniture movement of the 1980s. Today, this progressive approach continues with artists, architects, and designers who expand these legacies of handcrafted production, custom fabrication, and experiments in form, materials, and processes in their own unique ways. The exhibition takes its title from the landmark 1972 exhibition, Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, curated by Emilio Ambasz for the Museum of Modern Art, ...
Tagged: Cranbrook: A New Domestic Landscape
Read MoreIn recognition of Finland’s centennial of independence, Cranbrook Art Museum presents Finland 100: The Cranbrook Connection, an exhibition examining the profound influence this country has had on the development of the arts in America. Design has always been a special strength of Finnish culture, exemplified by the Cranbrook campus itself. When designing Cranbrook, architect Eliel Saarinen blended vernacular Finnish romanticism from his native Kirkkonummi, Finland, with the Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles prominent in America at the time. Saarinen’s comprehensive philosophy that one should design in the context of the next larger thing—from the chair to the room to the house to the city—meant that no element of the built environment should be overlooked. Thus, he and his talented family designed Cranbrook as a “total work of art,” which the New York Times has called “one of the greatest campuses ever created anywhere in the world.” The exhibition features many treasures ...
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