Apr

Spring is Here, and so are our Tours!

Here at Cranbrook, the flowers are blooming, the pollen is swirling, and the fountains are flowing. That can only mean one thing: Tour Season is here!

With our reimagined, in-person 2021 Tour Season, we invite you to book your tour of Saarinen House or the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Smith House today. Tours through these two distinguished landmarks will resume tomorrow, May 1, 2021, and continue through Thanksgiving.

Sara Smith and friends enjoy a dance in the Smith House dining room, circa 1970. Courtesy Melvyn Maxwell and Sara Evelyn Smith Papers, Cranbrook Archives.

Tours are now being offered of Smith House every weekend, taking place each Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at 1:00 pm and Saturday at 11:00 am. Saarinen House tours take place each Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at 3:00pm.

Of course, we’re taking lots of steps to ensure guest and staff safety, including shrinking tours to just six guests, requiring masks, and redesigning the route to ensure physical distancing between households. (You can read more about our safety policies on the tour website.)

*Flying Teacups*, 2021, Neva Gruver, CAA Metalsmithing 2021. Photography by Eric Perry, courtesy Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.

In addition to more tours and smaller group sizes, there’s also new art to see on your visit! As you may recall, in the spring, seventy-five Cranbrook Academy of Art students and artists-in-residence participated in the Center’s fourth intervention of new, site-specific work in our historic houses. The theme, Speculative Histories, encouraged the artists to produce objects and interventions that embrace, enlighten, uncover, or imagine histories for the Cranbrook, Saarinen, and Smith houses.

*Atelier Primavera (Stressed)*, 2021, Cooper Siegel, CAA Ceramics 2022. Photography by Eric Perry, courtesy Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.

We are excited to continue to feature artwork from ten Cranbrook Academy of Art students and one artist-in-residence during the 2021 Tour Season. (To see all the art displayed during Speculative Histories, you can always visit the virtual exhibition on the Center’s website)

*Peony Bush*, Claire Thibodeau, Ceramics 2022. Photography by Eric Perry, courtesy Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.

Kevin and I have been busy cleaning the houses and getting everything set for a new tour season. We can’t wait for you to join the Center in experiencing these magical homes!

– Leslie S. Mio, Associate Registrar, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research

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Apr

Photo Friday: A Working Honeymoon?!

From left: Lars Eriksson, Florence Knoll, Hans Knoll, Tom Bjorklund, and Elias Svedberg, 1946. Courtesy Cranbrook Archives.

This photo was taken sometime in August or September 1946 during Florence and Hans Knolls’ honeymoon to Sweden. The newlyweds, who met in New York where Florence was an architect and Hans ran his eponymous furniture company, traveled throughout Sweden on a “working honeymoon.”

The Knolls were there to make arrangements and agreements with Nordiska Kompaniet (NK, or The Nordic Company), a large Stockholm-based department store, and other companies to import Swedish furniture and textiles into the United States.

Florence “Shu” Knoll, née Schust, (1917-2019) is, of course, one of Cranbrook’s most distinguished alumna (Kingswood School Cranbrook 1934, Cranbrook Academy of Art student 1934-1937, 1939), and Hans Knoll (1914-1955) was the son of a German furniture maker associated with the Bauhaus. While we couldn’t find much information on the Swedes the Knolls are pictured with here, Elias Svedberg (1913-1987), on the far right, was an architect and designer with a long career at NK, starting in the mid-1940s. His midcentury modern Swedish furniture certainly would have appealed to the fashionable and modern Knolls!

This week at the Center, we’ve had Knoll (the company) on our mind since Monday’s important announcement of the merger of Knoll, Inc. and Herman Miller, Inc. into one company; we’ve also had Sweden on our mind as we gear up for our grand Swedish-themed fundraiser coming up on May 22, 2021: A Global House Party at Cranbrook and Millesgården. Of course, there’s a photo in Cranbrook Archives for every occasion!

—Leslie Mio, Associate Registrar, and Kevin Adkisson, Associate Curator, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research

PS: Don’t forget to purchase your tickets to House Party today so you don’t miss out on our special Carl Milles film premiere!

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Apr

Observing Landscapes: Topography and Photogrammetry

One of my favorite items in the collections of Cranbrook Archives is George Booth’s hand drawn map of Cranbrook, which he created over a 24-year period between 1904 and 1928. It is the earliest topographical record of Cranbrook and visually documents his ideas and plans for developing the landscape. In 1951, George’s son, Henry, created annotations to accompany the map, which are useful both in deciphering the map and identifying locations. Henry’s notes on what was envisioned and what was implemented during those early years, are a good starting point from which to venture into the manuscript collections for verification.

Cranbrook Map drawn by George G. Booth between 1904 and 1928.
Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives

As Cranbrook’s landscape evolved from a family estate into a center for art and education, the means of recording and viewing the topography was assisted by developments in aerial photography, known as photogrammetry. Talbert Abrams, a native of Michigan, is regarded as a key contributor to this field of photography, as he founded the Abrams Aerial Survey Corporation in 1923. The earliest aerial photograph of Cranbrook I could locate is from circa 1918.

Aerial photograph of Cranbrook estate and environs, circa 1918.
Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives

In the Cranbrook Photograph Collection there are many aerial photographs taken by Abrams, as well as other photography firms, ranging from the 1920s through the 1990s. Since the purposes of aerial surveys are manifold, correspondence provides some insight into why they were commissioned and how they were specifically used, for example, as publicity and advertising. In 1932 Cranbrook’s public relations manager, Lee A. White, engaged Cranbrook School Headmaster William Stevens to select an image for the coming year’s brochure, and aerial views appear in all the early Cranbrook brochures. Aerial surveys have also been used to assess and understand the landscape prior to making a change to it. This was the case in 1961, when a topographic map and aerial photography were requested for the Off-Street Parking Study.

Letter from Keith A. Smith to Arthur B. Wittliff, November 1961.
Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives

Correspondence between Arthur Wittliff, Secretary for the Cranbrook Foundation Board of Trustees, and Abrams Aerial Survey Corporation, provides intriguing details about the scale of the photography and the material base of the prints. The images below are from a December 6, 1961 set of 12 double weight velvet prints of aerials covering 1 square mile at a scale of 1 inch per 600 feet.

Aerial photograph ASP-5 taken by Abrams Aerial Survey Corporation on 6 December 1961.
Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives

ASP-5 (above) shows the intersection of Cranbrook Road and Lone Pine Road, and includes Kingswood School and Lake, the Institute of Science, Cranbrook House, Brookside School, Christ Church Cranbrook, and the Academy of Art and Academy Way. ASP-10 (below) shows another view of Cranbrook and its environs, encompassing the Institute of Science, Academy of Art, and Cranbrook School.

Aerial photograph ASP-10 taken by Abrams Aerial Survey Corporation on 6 December 1961.
Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives

When looking across the topographical history of Cranbrook from George’s map through aerial photographs, it is always fascinating to discern the changing landscape alongside the features that are unchanging. And, for me, the great inspiration of George’s map is that, although each individual project necessitated getting into the weeds and meticulous details, his ideas were always guided by situating them within a bigger picture.

—Laura MacNewman, Associate Archivist, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research

Apr

Cranbrook Gets the Royal Treatment

Not once, but twice, Cranbrook has pulled out the figurative red carpet and with appropriate fanfare welcomed Swedish royalty to its campus. Anyone who knows and loves Cranbrook might not be all that surprised by this revelation. After all, Cranbrook is a very special place—the home of dozens of sculptures by Sweden’s celebrated sculptor Carl Milles, who lived and worked at Cranbrook for twenty years, as well as many tapestries woven by Loja Saarinen’s renowned Swedish weavers. But the larger Detroit community has also boasted a significant Swedish cultural presence.

While most Michiganders might be familiar with the role that Swedish immigrants played in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula mining and lumber industries, Swedes also played major roles in Detroit’s development, from the auto industry to the fine and performing arts. Not least of all were the contributions made by Milles, including his sculpture The Hand of God, which has stood in front of the city’s Frank Murphy Hall of Justice since 1970. The founding in 1963 of the Detroit Swedish Council by Charles J. Koebel (who, decades earlier, had commissioned Eliel Saarinen to design his family home in Grosse Pointe Farms), saw a concerted effort to promote Swedish culture in the area. It was likely the unique combination of Cranbrook’s artistic works and Detroit’s vibrant Swedish community that attracted visits from Sweden’s royal family on two separate occasions.

Program for the day’s activities. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

So it was that on October 26, 1972, Princess Christina of Sweden set foot on Cranbrook grounds as part of her two-week tour of the States. And sixteen years later, her brother and his wife, King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia, followed suit on April 18, 1988. Both visits focused largely on Carl Milles’ Cranbrook legacy, directly involved the Academy of Art and Art Museum, and were the result of collaborations between Cranbrook and the Detroit Swedish Council. Yet each visit had its own unique activities and sense of purpose.

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Apr

Behind-the-Scenes of ‘Speculative Histories’

On a cold January evening, I crossed paths with Iris Eichenberg, Metalsmithing Artist-in-Residence, along Academy Way. Through our masks, we talked about how we might be able to do what has become an annual winter tradition: the special Academy of Art student show in Cranbrook House.

Three years ago, in February 2018, Iris and I worked together to place art from students and alumni of the Metalsmithing Department around the first floor of Cranbrook House. We did similar shows the next two years, inviting other departments as we went along. None of us could’ve guessed that the opening night of last year’s show would be one of the last large, maskless, worry-free gatherings for a while!

**Standing Veil** by Sylvain Malfroy-Camine, Painting 2021, on display in the Cranbrook House Sunset Porch as part of *Speculative Histories*, March 2021. Eric Perry, photographer. Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.

Knowing the 2021 student show in Cranbrook House would have to be totally different and without any public visitors, Iris and I wondered if we should do it at all. I talked with some of the other Artists-in-Residence (AIRs) and decided: if we don’t do the show this year, it’s just one more thing the current students won’t have a chance to experience due to the pandemic. There would be a show!

Without in-person visitors to the exhibition, one of our perennial logistical problems was solved. A wintertime event in Saarinen House or the Frank Lloyd Wright Smith House brings ice and salt and general weather-related nastiness—it’s why we close the houses for tours November to May. But if there aren’t any physical guests, why not expand the show to include all three of Cranbrook’s historic houses? If we expand to include more physical space, why not invite every department to participate?

**Untitled/Studio Objects** by Ian McDonald, Ceramics Artist-in-Residence, and **Vase** by Maija Grotell, Ceramics Artist-in-Residence 1938-1966, on display in Smith House as part of *Speculative Histories*, March 2021. Eric Perry, photographer. Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.

In a meeting at Saarinen House with Martha Mysko (Painting AIR), Gretchen Wilkins (Architecture AIR and Interim Dean), Rebecca Ripple (Sculpture AIR), and Iris, we settled on a theme for the exhibition: Speculative Histories. We asked the students to think about the many stories within each of the three houses and to speculate about what other stories might be told through their art. Whether real or imagined, well known or totally obscure, nostalgic or futuristic, we hoped this theme would inspire the artists to engage directly with the context of Cranbrook’s house museums.

In a year spent in relative solitude within their studios and attending virtual critiques and lectures, I hoped giving the students space to be creative within the historic houses would be a welcome change of pace.

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