Cranbrook Art Museum Announces New Summer Exhibition “Akea Brionne: A Dreaming Hour”

Bloomfield Hills, Mich., May 5, 2026 — Detroit artist Akea Brionne will open her first solo museum exhibition, Akea Brionne: A Dreaming Hour, at Cranbrook Art Museum on June 20. Brionne is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of lens- and fiber-based media, and is a 2023 graduate of the Cranbrook Academy of Art photography department. An opening celebration will be held on June 19, from 6–9pm. The exhibition will run through September 6, 2026.A Dreaming Hour debuts a new body of large, multipaneled works that transport visitors into Afrosurreal worlds shaped by memory, history, and imagination. Afrosurrealism focuses on the “invisible” world of dreams and the subconscious. For the artist’s first solo museum exhibition, Brionne has developed a research-driven practice that examines the lasting impact of colonial and imperialist histories on cultural storytelling, identity politics, and assimilation. Drawing from observations of the African Diaspora—particularly her Afro-Creole culture—she incorporates emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and digital ...

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A New Exhibition Takes Cranbrook Visitors into the Labyrinth | American Craft Council

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Detroit Opera to present John Cage’s Apartment House 1776 at Cranbrook Art Museum, May 21–24

Cage’s immersive “musicircus,” written in observance of the 1976 U.S. bicentennial, reimagines America’s colonial foundations as a chorus of voices drifting from apartment windowsDETROIT, March 30, 2026 – Detroit Opera’s 25/26 opera season will conclude with John Cage’s Apartment House 1776, an immersive operatic experience staged inside the galleries of the Cranbrook Art Museum on May 21, 22, 23, and 24. The production will be directed by Alexander Gedeon and will feature performance artist Selena Kearney; Detroit Opera Resident Artists Mia Mandineau, Brianna J. Robinson, and Travis Leon Williams; and the Detroit Opera Orchestra. There is no assigned seating, and audiences will choose their own paths through the performance. Tickets ($49) are available in person at the Detroit Opera House, online at detroitopera.org, and at 313.237.6454. Any unsold tickets will be available at the door at Cranbrook.What does 1776 mean to you? As the United States approaches its semiquincentennial, Detroit ...

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Cranbrook Art Museum To Open “Labyrinth/Laboratory: Selections from the Cranbrook Collection”

Clockwise from the left: Dee Clements, The Body is a Piece of Land (2025); Gerhardt Knodel, Guardians of the New Life (1987); Ato Ribeiro, Home Away From Home 2 (2017); Nick Cave, TM13 (2015); Sheida Soleimani, Khooros (rooster) named Manoocher (2021); Qualeasha Wood, It’s All For U (If U Rlly Want It) (2024); Karyn Olivier, Driftwood, Door, Man, and Boat (Gorée Island / Matinicus Island) (2023).Bloomfield Hills, Mich., April 2, 2026 — Cranbrook Art Museum presents Labyrinth/Laboratory: Selections from the Cranbrook Collection, a new ongoing exhibition of work by Cranbrook Academy of Art alumni and faculty that shows how artists across generations connect through their ideas, materials, and processes. With a focus on work produced from the 1960s to the present, Labyrinth/Laboratory features 47 works, including several recent acquisitions, all from Cranbrook Art Museum’s permanent collection.The exhibition opens on April 4 and will be celebrated on April 11, when the 2026 Graduate Degree Exhibition of Cranbrook Academy of Art opens to the public, making direct connections between Academy alumni and today's students. “This is the ...

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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 recently restored Preface for Chris (1973) by Joan Mitchell, Found Touch (1973) by Sam Gilliam, and the premiere of a recent gift, The Hunt (2019) by Cecily Brown. Monumental Color highlights each painter’s formal innovations in expressive coloration and gestural mark-making to forge an immersive visual experience.A leading young Abstract Expressionist painter, Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) was active in the New York School of painters and poets and was celebrated for her adeptness with color, often evoking the natural world. One of the great innovators of postwar American painting, Sam Gilliam (1933-2022) expanded his radiant color-drenched ...

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