Displaying items by tag: cranbrook academy of art

On April 28, the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) unveils a major exhibition examining the contributions and the legacy of women working in the applied arts during the mid 20th century, a time when curatorial attention and prestige were lavished on
 their male counterparts and those working in the fine arts. Installed on two floors of the museum, “Pathmakers: Women in Art, Craft, and Design, Midcentury and Today” showcases works by three dozen artists associated with craft centers such as the Bauhaus in Germany and later, the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan.

Few individuals have had as profound an effect on American furniture design as Paul Evans (1931-1987). A leading figure in the midcentury American studio furniture movement, Evans consistently pushed boundaries with his innovative approaches to metalsmithing and furniture-making. His transcendent works, which defied what everyday objects looked like and how they were made, continue to reveal the fascinating crosscurrents between sculpture and design.

Evans began working with metal in the early 1950s -- first at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s School for American Craftsmen (SAC) in Rochester, New York, where he studied under the influential American silversmiths and designers John (Jack) Prip and Lawrence Copeland, and later at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

After a one-year search, Christopher Scoates has been chosen as the Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum’s new director to replace Reed Kroloff. It is a homecoming of sorts for Scoates who graduated from the Bloomfield Hills, Michigan school in 1986 with a masters in photography. Scoates comes to Cranbrook from the University Art Museum at California State University Long Beach and will start the job August 1.