Skilled Labor: Black Realism in Detroit

Skilled Labor: Black Realism in Detroit focuses on a local community of artists that have developed expert skills in drawing and painting, and, through deft hands, explore the representation of the Black body in both personal and cultural contexts. Rejecting the monolithic nature under which the Black body is frequently conceived and popularly imagined, Skilled Labor illustrates the range, depth, nuance, and variety of Black life through each artist’s unique approach to figuration. The exhibition features a spectrum of lived experiences—joy, intimacy, reverie, danger, tension—through this artistic lens. Collectively, these artists are undertaking the laborious task of art historical and cultural rethinking through acts of representation.“Skilled labor” refers to highly trained, experienced individuals who complete complex mental or physical tasks with expertise. The term poetically speaks to these Detroit artists that perform a durational and technically proficient approach to artmaking. Skilled labor is also a rigorous intellectual process that these ...

Tagged: 2023, Cranbrook Art Museum, Laura Mott

Cranbrook Art Museum Announces It Will Premiere New Exhibition Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other This Summer

Exhibition Dates: June 17, 2023–September 24, 2023 ArtMember Preview: June 16, 2023Travels to High Museum of Art in Atlanta and Museum of Arts and Design in New York City in late 2023–2024Clockwise from top left: (1) Sonya Clark with Beaded Prayers Project, 1999–present. (2) Hair Craft Project Hairstyles, 2014. (3) Participant in Reconstruction Exercise, 2019. Installation view: The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Courtesy of the artist. (4) Sonya Clark at work on Finding Freedom, 2019-20. (5) Finding Freedom, 2019-20. Installation view: Phillips Museum of Art at Franklin & Marshall College. Courtesy of the artist. (6) Participant in The Healing Memorial project in Detroit, 2020. Bloomfield Hills, Mich., Feb. 15, 2023 – This summer, Cranbrook Art Museum will debut the new exhibition Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other, a mid-career survey of the pioneering fiber artist that will bring together her large-scale community-centered and participatory projects for the first time. It opens at Cranbrook Art Museum on June 17, ...

Tagged: 2023, Andrew Blauvelt, Cranbrook Art Museum, Laura Mott

The National Endowment for the Arts Awards Cranbrook Art Museum Grant for Upcoming Cuban Mid-Century Design Project

Cranbrook Educational Community is pleased to announce Cranbrook Art Museum has been approved by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to receive a Grants for Arts Projects award of $50,000. This funding will help support the research and curation of an upcoming exhibition examining Cuban mid-twentieth-century design. The grant is one of 1,251 Grants for Arts Projects awards totaling nearly $28.8 million that were announced by the NEA last week as part of its first round of fiscal year 2023 grants. “The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts projects in communities nationwide,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “Projects such as this one with Cranbrook Art Museum strengthen arts and cultural ecosystems, provide equitable opportunities for arts participation and practice, and contribute to the health of our communities and our economy." “We are grateful for the continued support of the NEA,” said Laura Mott, Chief Curator of Cranbrook Art Museum. “This funding ...

Tagged: 2022, Cranbrook Art Museum, Laura Mott

Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other

Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other is a mid-career survey of the artist’s work with a focus on her community-centered and participatory projects. Over her twenty-five-year career, Clark has been committed to issues of history, race, and reconciliation. Clark often undertakes this exploration through everyday fiber materials—hair, flags, found fabric—and craft practices. In Clark’s work, craft and community are intertwined, and the resulting projects facilitate new collective encounters across racial, gender, and socioeconomic divisions. The ethos of her participatory work is embedded in the title We Are Each Other. It is inspired by the poem about civil rights activist Paul Robeson (1971) by Gwendolyn Brooks, which ends with the phrase: “we are each other’s harvest: we are each other’s business: we are each other’s magnitude and bond.”In the Hair Craft Project, for example, Clark collaborated with hairstylists to use the hair on her own head as a canvas to highlight ...

Tagged: 2023, Cranbrook Art Museum, Laura Mott, Sonya Clark

Detroit Artist Bakpak Durden Shines In This Season of Exhibits At Cranbrook Art Museum | BLAC Detroit

Tagged: 2022, Bakpak Durden, Cranbrook Art Museum, Laura Mott

The Healing Memorial

**The Healing Memorial was on view at Cranbrook Art Museum through September 24, 2023, as part of Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other and is currently in Cranbrook Art Museum's Collection Wing.Cranbrook Art Museum, The City of Detroit, the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy and Huntington Place have organized a large-scale memorial art installation to help our community heal from loss during the COVID-19 pandemic.  The Healing Memorial is a site-specific adaptation of the Beaded Prayers Project by world-renowned artist Sonya Clark (CAA, MFA Fiber ’95), which has traveled the world for more than two decades. For this project, metro area Detroit residents have created small memorial pouches using fabric from their loved ones or donated material and folded inside a written commemoration, intention, wish, or prayer. The pouches were then sewn shut with decorative beads—each one a unique handmade object.To date, more than 4,000 regional residents created personal pieces of art in honor of their ...

Tagged: 2021, Cranbrook Art Museum, Laura Mott

Laura Mott Named Chief Curator of Cranbrook Art Museum

BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MICH., April 28, 2022 – Cranbrook Art Museum has announced that Laura Mott has been promoted to the position of Chief Curator of Cranbrook Art Museum. She previously held the position of Senior Curator of Contemporary Art and Design at the museum.An accomplished curator and lecturer, Mott joined Cranbrook in 2013 and has curated and co-curated more than 20 projects for the museum, including Landlord Colors: On Art, Economy, and Materiality, an exhibition and publication for which she was named a Warhol Curatorial Fellow, Nick Cave: Here Hear, Maya Stovall: Liquor Store Theater, Allie McGhee: Banana Moon Horn, Olga de Amaral: To Weave a Rock, and upcoming exhibitions with artists Tyrrell Winston and Sonya Clark. This June, the museum will premiere Tunde Olaniran: Made a Universe, a multi-year project led by Mott that includes a short film, large installation and performance by the Flint-based musician and performer."Laura Mott ...

Tagged: 2022, Cranbrook Art Museum, Laura Mott

Whatever Gets You Through the Night: Selections from the Mott-Warsh Collection

Flint-based artist Tunde Olaniran and Cranbrook Art Museum have partnered with MW Gallery to present a selection of works from the preeminent Mott-Warsh Collection, which focuses on art by artists of the African diaspora and those who reflect on it. This exhibition is an extension of a similarly titled show on view through August 20, 2022 at MW Gallery in downtown Flint.  This selection of artwork shares themes with Tunde Olaniran’s newly-commissioned film and installation Made A Universe, which is concurrently on view at the museum. The exhibition investigates how societal challenges, such as systemic disenfranchisement, racism, xenophobia, and isolation, can become pressing personal struggles about our health, wellness, economic stability, and more. Amid these personal and shared trials, myriad questions arise: How do we cope? Where do we go to seek relief? Who or what makes us feel better? How do we heal?At Cranbrook Art Museum, the exhibition includes work by ...

Tagged: 2022, Cranbrook Art Museum, Laura Mott

Tyrrell Winston got famous for using lost basketballs as art. Now, he’s leaving home to find what’s next. | USA Today

Tagged: 2022, Cranbrook Art Museum, Laura Mott, Tyrrell Winston

A Look at Cranbrook Art Museum’s Fall 2021 Exhibits | HOUR Detroit

Tagged: 2021, Andrew Blauvelt, Cranbrook Art Museum, Laura Mott