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An exhibition at Cranbrook Art Museum highlights the institution’s role in the mid-century modern design movement.The exhib “Everything Eventually Connects” closes this weekend in Bloomfield Hills.The exhibit expands the traditional narrative by featuring works from women, LGBTQ+ individuals and designers of color.A panel discussion with curators from Detroit-area museums will explore different approaches to collecting design.
A dazzling summer exhibition at Cranbrook Art Museum — “Everything Eventually Connects: Mid-Century Modern Design in the U.S.” — closes this weekend with a must-see panel discussion that will examine the role of curators in modern museums and in Detroit specifically.
The large-scale survey of one of the most important movements in modern American design takes an in-depth look at Cranbrook’s pivotal role in its development, as well as the contributions of women, LGBTQ+ individuals and designers of color during the period,. It features nearly 200 works by more than 80 artists, architects and designers.
The project celebrates the iconic contributions of figures like Charles and Ray Eames, Harry Bertoia, Florence Knoll, and Eero Saarinen while expanding the narrative to highlight the often-overlooked contributions of women and designers of color who shaped this influential movement such as Joel Robinson, Ray Komai, Ruth Adler Schnee, Olga Lee, Miller Yee Fong, Lucia DeRespinis, Dorothy Liebes and many others.
“It really begins at Cranbrook,” said Andrew Satake Blauvelt, Cranbrook Art Museum director and co-curator of the exhibition. “The first wave of modernism was about abstract forms, like pure geometry, like looking at nature, whereas mid-century modernism wanted to put (in) all those things that European modernism wanted to reject, like ornamentation, texture, color, all the fun stuff, but still make it modern. One of the big themes in the show is humanizing modernism through what is happening during this time. So it’s, in itself, kind of a critique of that sort of Eurocentric tradition, or at least the beginnings of that tradition coming out of Germany, in particular, and the Soviet Union in the early part of the 20th century.
“With the birth of National Socialism or Naziism in Germany, they cracked down on modern art there, and so the Nazis end up closing the Bauhaus. Those designers and teachers end up fleeing all over Europe, but many of them end up in the United States eventually because of World War II, and they land on fertile soil here in America.”
Blauvelt pointed to the story of Cranbrook alum and design legend Schnee as an example.
“Her family fled Nazi Germany,” he explained. “Her father was arrested by the Gestapo and somehow miraculously escaped a concentration camp — this was in the early days, before they had figured out what they wanted to do with everyone. The family ended up coming to America and settling in Detroit, and then she spends her career here. She ends up studying at Cranbrook Design, then opens her modern furniture store and interior architecture design practice here in Detroit. We have her featured in the show, of course. Her modern design ideals then begin to adapt to their new local and national context.”
An outstanding, 464-page book has been published to accompany the exhibition, with contributions from more than 25 historians. Serving as both a catalog and a scholarly deep dive into the expanded legacy of this design movement, it spotlights more than 75 key people, ideas and objects that played crucial roles in its development, including figures who have remained largely unsung through history such as Bill Lam, Evelyn Ackerman, Olga Lee and Miller Yee Fong.
On Saturday, Sept. 20, at 3 p.m., Blauvelt will be joined by Katherine White (curator of design, the Henry Ford) and Shelley Selim (Mort Harris Curator of Automotive, Industrial and Decorative Design, Detroit Institute of Arts) for a conversation exploring how different types of institutions — contemporary art museums, history museums, and encyclopedic museums — approach collecting design. Each curator will highlight recent acquisitions and share insights into the evolving priorities shaping their collections.
Admission for the talk is free with museum admission. RSVP at cranbrookartmuseum.org.
“Everything Eventually Connects: Mid-Century Modern Design in the U.S.” closes Sunday, Sept. 21 at Cranbrook Art Museum, 39221 Woodward Ave., Bloomfield Hills.