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

Tagged: 2026

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 ...

Tagged: 2026, Detroit Opera

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 ...

Tagged: 2026