This exhibition catalog documents the emergence of modern American design in the second quarter of the 20th century. Cranbrook was one of the few institutions in the United States that offered instruction in design during the 1920s and 30s and its influence on architecture, interior design, art and crafts after World War II was crucial and extensive. The exhibition includes over 200 objects and photo-panels and surveys the history of the Cranbrook facility, as well as the achievements of the teachers and students. Presenting the history of the Cranbrook community, it covers Eliel Saarinen's contribution to architecture and urban design, interior design and furniture, metalwork and bookbinding, textiles, ceramics, sculpture and painting. ISBN 0-89558-097-7 (pbk.); ISBN 0-87099-341-0 (pbk.) : $45.00 (For use only in the library).
Offers tips on identifying, collecting, and caring for furniture, photographs, posters and illustration art, costume jewelry and wristwatches, dolls, toys, advertising and sports memorabilia, and glass and pottery.
A landmark survey of the formative years of American studio ceramics and the constellation of people, institutions, and events that propelled it from craft to fine art
The newest titles in the Princeton Architectural Press Campus Guide series take readers on an insider's tour of the University of Washington in Seattle, Rice University in Houston, and Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Beautifully photographed in full color, the guides present architectural walks at three of America's finest campuses, revealing the stories behind the historic and contemporary buildings, gardens, and works of public art. The community of Cranbrook, designed by Eliel Saarinen, combines modernism with arts-and-crafts and art deco impulses; more recently, Steven Holl, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, and Rafael Moneo have made contributions to Cranbrook's campus.
Studios are, at once, material environments and symbolic forms, sites of artistic creation and physical labor, and nodes in networks of resource circulation. They are architectural places that generate virtual spaces—worlds built to build worlds. Yet, despite being icons of corporate identity, studios have faded into the background of critical discourse and into the margins of film and media history. In response, In the Studio demonstrates that when we foreground these worlds, we gain new insights into moving-image culture and the dynamics that quietly mark the worlds on our screens. Spanning the twentieth century and moving globally, this unique collection tells new stories about studio icons—Pinewood, Cinecittà, Churubusco, and CBS—as well as about the experimental workplaces of filmmakers and artists from Aleksandr Medvedkin to Charles and Ray Eames and Hollis Frampton.
An expansive look at the multifaceted American artist Toshiko Takaezu within the history of postwar artmaking Toshiko Takaezu (1922-2011) was an American artist whose multidisciplinary work in ceramics, painting, sculpture, weaving, and installation innovatively drew from the natural world, combining expressionist energies with influences from East Asia. The closed ceramic forms for which she is best known are effectively abstract paintings in the round. Her reputation as a ceramic artist, however, has obscured the breadth of her output in other mediums and her role within the larger art movements of the twentieth century. This book provides the first retrospective assessment of Takaezu's art and life, representing her diverse oeuvre, which spanned six decades, and her hybrid identity as an Asian American woman, artist, and teacher. This ambitious volume features essays exploring Takaezu's biography, her background as a Hawai'i-born artist of Okinawan heritage, the relationship between her abstract work and that of her contemporaries, the role of cultural exchange in her art, her impact as an educator, and more. Beautifully illustrated with nearly 300 images of artworks and archival photographs, and including an updated chronology, exhibition history, and recollections from the artist's former apprentices, the book offers a compelling and comprehensive account of this singular artist's career. Published in association with The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum Exhibition Schedule: The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York (March 20-July 28, 2024) Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI (September 11, 2024-January 12, 2025) Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (March 2-May 18, 2025) Chazen Museum of Art (September 8-December 23, 2025) Honolulu Museum of Art (February 13-July 26, 2026)
In the Vanguard: Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, 1950–1969 traces the first two decades of the Haystack Mountain School of Craft’s history and its pivotal impact on the world of art and craft practice in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. The first scholarly investigation of this internationally renowned school, the exhibition, and the accompanying catalogue will feature work made at Haystack or influenced by time spent there by some of the most highly recognized names in the fields of fiber, glass, ceramics, jewelry, and graphic arts to demonstrate the school’s significant role in debates about art, craft, industry, and pedagogy in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. Haystack’s model of brief summer sessions and changing instructors offered new ways of thinking about the status of craft as art and the nature of accessible design in the context of communally based, process-oriented learning. Anni Albers, Toshiko Takaezu, Jack Lenor Larsen, Kay Sekimachi, Arline Fisch, Robert Arneson, Harvey Littleton, Wolf Kahn, and Dale Chihuly are just a few of the artists who taught at the school between 1950 and 1969 and who helped define Haystack’s radically open-ended approach towards art and craft. With approximately eighty objects assembled from public and private collections and archives, many rarely or never before exhibited in a museum, In the Vanguard will establish the substantial legacy of this remote community of makers in the art and education world at large. Archival material installed throughout the exhibition will include original correspondence, photographs, brochures, architectural models, posters, and early ephemera. Published in association with the Portland Museum of Art. Exhibition dates: Portland Museum of Art, Maine: May 24–September 8, 2019 Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan: November 15, 2019–March 8, 2020
Bloomfield Hills is an affluent suburban city located 20 miles north of downtown Detroit. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, much of the area's rolling farmland was purchased by wealthy Detroit residents who had first discovered "the hills" when they went touring northward in their new horseless carriages. Seeking refuge from Detroit's summer heat and crowds, the newcomers built weekend homes that ranged from elaborate farmhouses to large manor estates. Philanthropists George Gough Booth and his wife, Ellen Scripps Booth, envisioned more than a manor house for themselves, however, and built what is now a National Historic Landmark, the Cranbrook Educational Community. In 1932, Bloomfield Hills incorporated as a city. The city retains its mystique as an enclave of elegant living and exceptional schools, but its history also includes instances of poverty and mayhem. It is all here in Images of America: Bloomfield Hills: Home of Cranbrook.
