Warhol On Vinyl: The Record Covers, 1949-1987+ Opens at Cranbrook Art Museum

BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich., May 28, 2014 – Cranbrook Art Museum announces the opening of six new exhibitions that will debut with a weekend of celebration on June 20-22. Beginning with the opening of Warhol On Vinyl: The Record Covers, 1949-1987+, the Museum will exhibit nearly 100 album covers, including variations of more than 50 unique designs by Andy Warhol throughout his career. Featured in the exhibitions will be the world-premiere of three album covers that have never before been exhibited, including a cover recently discovered last year. Cranbrook has also been loaned a copy of the one-of-a-kind “Night Beat” album cover, making this the most comprehensive exhibition of authenticated record covers to date. See every cover Warhol designed, from the iconic Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers to the extremely rare Giant Size $1.57 Each, his first Pop Art record cover. The sculptural furniture of designer/craftsman and former Cranbrook Academy of Art student Paul ...

Cranbrook Art Museum and Anders Ruhwald Announced as Finalists for Knight Arts Challenge Detroit Grants

Cranbrook Art Museum and Artist-in-Residence and Head of the Ceramics Department, Anders Ruhwald, were recently announced as finalists in the Detroit Knight Arts Challenge, which looks to award millions to local organizations focused on expanding the arts in the city of Detroit. This is the second year of the challenge. Last year, the first of three for the Detroit Knight Arts Challenge, the contest awarded $2.1 million to 56 ideas - including four projects involving Academy alumni with awards totaling $200,000. This year, the Knight Foundation received close to 1,000 applications which they were able to narrow down to 88 finalists. Winners will be announced in October. Open to everyone, the Knight Arts Challenge offers matching grant money to the best ideas for the arts. Applicants must follow only three rules: 1) The idea must be about the arts; 2) The project must take place in or benefit Detroit; 3) The grant recipient ...

Farewell Massimo Vignelli

Wow, has it been a month since the last post? Apologies for the radio silence over here--we are closing in on the final weeks before the opening of our summer exhibitions (June 20th for members, June 21 for the public!) and all of the troops have been rallying to perfect install and content before our guests arrive! I had to return to the blog today to pay tribute to Massimo Vignelli, who passed away in New York yesterday at the age of 83. Vignelli was a design visionary, executing some of the most iconic graphic programs of the 1960s and 1970s, and renowned especially for promulgating the International Typographic Style through his many designs for advertising, corporate identity, and packaging. With his company Unimark, and later Vignelli Associates, he launched graphic identity systems for Knoll (1967), American Airlines (1967), and the New York City Transit Authority (1970), as well as the ...

Tagged: Dot Zero, Graphic Design, Massimo Vignelli, Shelley Selim

Cranbrook Academy of Art Presents The J. Robert F. Swanson Lectures: David Adjaye and Gregg Pasquarelli

Bloomfield Hills, Mich., April 22, 2014 – Cranbrook Academy of Art welcomes two leading figures in the world of architecture for the J. Robert F. Swanson Lecture Series. The first speaker is David Adjaye, OBE, one of the leading architects of his generation, who will join us on April 25 at 4pm. Adjaye is the founder of architectural firm Adjaye Associates, which has offices in London, Berlin, New York, Accra and Shanghai. The firm holds commissions for projects around the world, including the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo (2005),  the Moscow School of Management Skolkov (2010), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver (2007), and two public libraries in Washington, D.C. (2012). In 2009, a team led by Adjaye was selected to design the new $360 million Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Adjaye is currently a visiting professor of architecture and design at Yale. He ...

Warhol on Vinyl (It’s Record Store Day Tomorrow!)

We're big vinyl connoisseurs here at the Art Museum. One of us collects albums with covers featuring mid-century furniture (like this one!). Another spent a weekend scouring every record store in Stockholm for a Swedish pressing of Lee Hazlewood's Cowboy in Sweden, to no avail. So it's no surprise that we are pretty pumped for Record Store Day tomorrow, an annual nationwide event--held on the third Saturday of April--for which record stores feature limited edition pressings and exclusive releases from hundreds of musicians, new and old. Record collecting has experienced a surge in recent years, particularly for my generation. If we want to get diagnostic, it all could be chalked up to a cultural response to the immateriality of music (and more broadly, our lives in general); a longing for the days past when music--in its vinyl manifestation--was tangible, permanent, and thus held more personal value. But there's also that big, ...

Tagged: Album Art, Andy Warhol, Ben Shahn, Graphic Design, Painting, Shelley Selim

Rock of Ages: The Sanilac Petroglyphs

CRANBROOK SIGHTING: CRANBROOK INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE Drawings of the Sanilac Petroglyphs, Sanilac County, Michigan Darrel J. Richards Circa 1940 Graphite on paperSanilac Petroglyph drawings by Darrel J. Richards. Photograph by R. H. Hensleigh.In 1881, the "Great Thumb Fire" ravaged the woods of what is now Sanilac Petroglyph Historic State Park and its surrounding areas in eastern Michigan, causing 282 fatalities and burning upwards of one million acres of land. (Sidenote: The region received the inaugural relief efforts from Clara Barton's American Red Cross, which was founded just months earlier). In the aftermath, a farmer surveying the damage to his land noticed large sections of carvings on a limestone outcrop that had previously been obscured by a thick brush which was now burned away.Sanilac Petroglyph drawings, detail. Photograph by R. H. Hensleigh.What he discovered were the Sanilac Petroglyphs, rock carvings almost certainly made by a member of the Anishinaabeg people between 300 and 1,000 years ...

Tagged: Cranbrook Institute of Science, Sanilac Petroglyphs

Pipsan: The Lesser-Known (But No Less Impressive!) Saarinen Sibling

CRANBROOK SIGHTING: INSIDE THE VAULT Sol-Air Canvas Chaise Lounge, c. 1950 Pipsan Saarinen Swanson and J. Robert F. Swanson for Swanson and Associates Iron, rope, and canvas 34 x 23 x 24 in. (86.4 x 58.4 x 61 cm) Transfered from the Cranbrook Academy of Art If it were up to me, every month would be Women's History Month, but alas for the foreseeable future it is *officially* delegated to March in the United States, and today is our last chance to celebrate! How auspicious that March 31 also happens to be the birthday of Pipsan (born Eva Lisa) Saarinen Swanson, designer of furniture, interiors, fashion, and textiles, and younger sister of one of the most recognizable names in modern architecture, Eero Saarinen. Pipsan's father Eliel was of course the architect of the Cranbrook Campus and President of the Cranbrook Academy of Art from 1932-1946, but before being lured to Bloomfield Hills by Cranbrook founder George ...

Tagged: Eero Saarinen, Eliel Saarinen, Furniture, Pipsan Saarinen, Robert F. Swanson, Shelley Selim

Cranbrook Opens Its Doors to Showcase Graduate Work and Work Spaces

2014 Graduate Degree Exhibition of Cranbrook Academy of Art and OPEN(STUDIOS) Art Sale + Community Day Return Bloomfield Hills, Mich., March 27, 2014 - The 2014 Graduate Degree Exhibition of Cranbrook Academy of Art opens to the public on April 22, and will showcase work from the next generation of architects, artists and designers who are shaping the future of art and design. The exhibition features pieces that are the culmination of two years of studio work from a diverse group of 75 graduates. The exhibition will run from April 22 – May 11, 2014. Visitors can see installations such as an outdoor chandelier composed entirely of small bags of water, participate in an interactive virtual video work based on their movements in the gallery and experience a self-activated mechanical arm that brings speakers directly to the listener. The exhibition will fill the entire 15,000 square feet of Cranbrook Art Museum and surrounding ...

Happy Birthday, May Morris!

CRANBROOK SIGHTINGS: INSIDE THE VAULT May Morris Bed-Hangings (Two Curtains) 1916, or earlier Embroidered wool on linen Each panel: 76 ¾ x 27 inches Gift of George Gough Booth and Ellen Scripps BoothMay Morris, Bed Hangings, c. 1916. Photo courtesy Cranbrook Art Museum.On the 152nd anniversary of her birth all of us at Cranbrook Art Museum are excited to wish artist and designer May Morris a very happy birthday! Born March 25, 1862 in Bexley Heath, England, May Morris grew up in an artistic community fueled by the beliefs of her father William Morris, a founder of the British Arts and Crafts Movement. Intellectually committed to her father’s movement, she learned needlecraft at the feet of her mother Jane, a Pre-Raphaelite model and muse for Morris and others. As an adult, May Morris advocated both for her father’s artistic movement and for women’s involvement in art through needlework. She traveled the United States for five months between ...

Tagged: Arts and Crafts Movement, Cranbrook House, May Morris, Shoshana Resnikoff, Textiles

Music-Mushrooms-Manuscripts: John Cage at Cranbrook

John Cage Listens to John Cage, 1974. Offset lithograph poster designed by Michael McCoy, with photography by Frances Greenberg. Printed at Cranbrook Press. (c) Michael McCoy. Photo courtesy Stephen Milanowski.In early April of 1974, artist-composer John Cage traveled to Cranbrook to celebrate the opening of Music–Mushrooms–Manuscripts at the Art Museum, an exhibition of his drawings, photographs, books, poems, prints, and sound recordings. Featured works included his 1969 series of Plexigrams, Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel, and the Mushroom Book, both printed by Irwin Hollander (1973-1975 head of the Cranbrook Academy of Art Printmaking department). On the evening of April 12, Cage attended a concert of his own music—aptly titled “John Cage Listens to John Cage”—performed by local musicians as well as students from the Cranbrook Upper School and neighboring Andover and Seaholm high schools. The program featured a 35-piece ensemble of brass, string, woodwind, and non-pitched percussion instruments for ...

Tagged: Chuck Baughman, Doug Huston, Graphic Design, John Cage, Michael McCoy, Prints, Shelley Selim, Stephen Milanowski, Steve Tennent