history slide test

Renamed “Cranbrook Art Museum” in 1995 to signal its greater independence, under Wittkopp’s directorship the Museum embarked upon a significant period of growth, building on its former role as a more autonomous public museum that still remained part of the Academy of Art. This evolution continued the Art Museum’s history as a forum for contemporary art, but one that now served increasingly diverse constituencies. One step in this process was broadening the scope of its collection, which since the 1970s had been focused exclusively on the work of Art Academy alumni and faculty. In 2001, forty-six world-class works of postwar European and American painting and sculpture were donated by Rose M. Shuey, transforming the Art Museum’s holdings overnight. This effectively ended the restrictive focus of the Museum’s collecting, and today the Art Museum concentrates its acquisitions on important works of modern and contemporary art, architecture, design, and craft.