03

May

Photo Friday: Swimming in Lake Jonah, 1953

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Lake Jonah, 1953. Cranbrook Archives.

With the start of May, spring has finally arrived at Cranbrook.  Flowers bloom, warm breezes sweep through the hills, and the various campus lakes look more and more inviting with each passing day.  Swimming in Lake Jonah is strictly forbidden, of course, but once upon a time the lake functioned as the campus swimming pool.  Here, students at the 1953 Cranbrook Academy of Art Summer Institute learn to swim in Lake Jonah, while in the background other students contemplate the possibility of canoeing.

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17

Apr

Dispatch from the Archives: All Things Modernism

Mid-century Modernism has taken over my life!  I eat, sleep, and even dream Modernism these days.  In my role as Head Archivist, I wear many hats – the most recent being to assist the Michigan Modern curatorial team by locating all the cool “stuff” in our Archives related to the upcoming exhibition, which will be opening at the Cranbrook Art Museum on June 14, 2013.  This includes photographs, of course, but the most fun for me is finding correspondence, articles, and ephemera that when put together create a mosaic of a time or place. Continue reading →

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12

Apr

Photo Friday: Graduate Degree Exhibition

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Cranbrook Academy of Art student Walter Hickey’s model for a proposed development for the Detroit waterfront, 1935. Cranbrook Archives.

You know it’s April at the Cranbrook Art Museum when the building is overrun by graduate students from the Academy of Art, frantically putting together their final projects for the Graduate Degree Exhibition.  While the degree show (opening this year on April 22 and running until May 12) is a longtime tradition at Cranbrook (staged in some iteration since 1940!),  graduate theses date back to 1943— the first year the Academy was accredited as a degree-granting institution.   In 1935 Walter Hickey created this model as part of a larger project to redesign the Detroit waterfront helmed by Cranbrook Academy of Art director and famed architect Eliel Saarinen.

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