Monday, April 8, 2024 | 5:00pm
Monday, April 29, 2024 | 5:00pm
Monday, May 6, 2024 | 5:00pm
Monday, May 13, 2024 | 5:00pm

Cranbrook is in the process of selecting an architect to design a new home for Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research, including Cranbrook Archives. You are invited to join us as we learn more about the four firms under consideration and how their work aligns with the needs of the Center’s future.

Thursday, May 2nd, 2024
6:30pm - 7:45pm ET
Virtual Lecture

Join the Center on this deep dive into the art and architecture of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Smith House. Developed from the extensive research conducted during her two-and-a-half year Collections Fellowship at Cranbrook, art historian Nina Blomfield will present an intimate look at the fine art and decorative objects assembled by Melvyn and Sara Smith between 1950 and the 1980s. 

Tuesday, April 18, 2023
The Center’s latest Uncovering the Archives program will once again take a closer look at how new scholarship emerges directly from research of primary resources in Cranbrook Archives. The Katherine and Michael McCoy Papers is an excellent example of how the historical record can lead to contemporary interpretations. Join us as our speaker, Colin Fanning, delves into this transformative legacy of Academy Designers-in-Residence Katherine and Michael McCoy.

Tuesday, March 28, 2023
Join the Cranbrook Center as we explore two pilgrimages to the fascinating market town of Cranbrook in Kent, England—one in 1901 and the other in 2023—and the remarkable connections between the two Cranbrooks—all in anticipation of the Center’s gala fundraiser on May 20, 2023: A House Party at Two Cranbrooks.

Tuesdays, February 14, through March 14, 2023
Join Kevin Adkisson for the return of the Center’s popular History of American Architecture Lecture Series. The sixth annual installment will focus on the creativity and legacy of America’s most enduring architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.

Tuesday, November 15, 2022
Originally produced for the Center’s May 2022 fundraiser, A House Party at Cranbrook, the expanded Director’s Cut of this exploration of the life and career of designer and textile artist Loja Saarinen includes a new interview with Saarinen’s granddaughter, landscape architect Susan Saarinen. The live virtual screenings will be followed by a special behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film and a live conversation with curator and director, Kevin Adkisson and Center fellow, Nina Blomfield.

Sundays, April 10, April 24, and May 1, 2022
Complicating Collections at Cranbrook: Representations of a Confederate General, The Crusades, and Native Americans
While Cranbrook’s grounds and architecture serve as sources of beauty and inspiration, several iconic works of art across the campus hold complicated histories. Complicating Collections at Cranbrook, brings four experts to the Center’s virtual auditorium where they will contextualize and enhance our understanding of a sculptural study for a fountain in Texas by Carl Milles intended to memorialize Robert E. Lee; the depiction of the Crusades designed by George Booth and carved by John Kirchmayer in the oak overmantel in the Cranbrook House Library; and the representations of Native Americans by non-Natives in the Cranbrook Map Room, notably A Hunter of Taos painted by Oscar Berninghaus.

Sunday, March 27th, 2022
Engaging in the Academy’s long tradition of making functional art and objects for the table, approximately fifty artists from each of the Academy’s eleven departments have created work for tables in Cranbrook’s historic house museums. Created in dialogue with the decorative arts and architecture of each site, experimental new works in a range of media will be sited directly alongside existing pieces in the homes and from Cranbrook collections, challenging the idea of art existing only within the neutral space of the studio or gallery. 

Monday, March 21st, 2022
Join the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research for our latest Uncovering the Archives program, as we once again delve into the collections of Cranbrook Archives and bring to light new scholarship. Guest speakers Alison Kowalski and Karen Swanson will explore the largely untold story of Pipsan Saarinen Swanson.

^{Mondays, January 31 - February 28, 2022 
Learn about the architects, designers, and thinkers associated with one of Cranbrook’s, and the nation’s, most influential designers: Eero Saarinen.}

Sunday, December 12, 2021
This holiday season, experience Cranbrook House in a new, festive way, as we explore a century of history painted onto the walls of the magnificent Oak Room. 

Monday, October 25, 2021
Join the Center for our latest Uncovering Cranbrook lecture, this month focusing on the wonders of Cranbrook’s brick buildings! 

^{Sunday, September 12, 2021
Book Launch, Lecture, and Conversation with Author Ana Araujo, Architectural Association, London
No Compromise looks at Florence Knoll's extraordinary career in close-up, from her student days at Cranbrook to her professional accomplishments.}

Sunday, June 27th, 2021
Join Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research on a photographic journey to midcentury Iraq and explore a nation at a crossroads, when the country and its landscapes of ancient Mesopotamia were en route to tremendous change. Drawing from Cranbrook Archives’ vast collection of Cranbrook Institute of Science photographs, experience a unique opportunity to rediscover a decades-old scientific research trip from an entirely fresh art historical and cultural perspective.

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2021
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research is pleased to announce the launch of a new seminar program series highlighting the collections of Cranbrook Archives and the contributions they are making to the development of new knowledge.

For the inaugural seminar, Vishal Khandelwal will examine a fascinating connection between mid-century textile design in the United States and India—a connection informed by his research conducted from 2019 to 2021 in Cranbrook Archives.  

UNSETTLING LANDSCAPES AT CRANBROOK: HISTORIES OF INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES, THE JAPANESE EXPERIENCE, AND SUBURBAN SEGREGATION

A Series of Three Virtual Lectures and Conversations

Join Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research as we examine the histories of three of Cranbrook’s iconic cultural landscapes through the lens of racial and social justice. The 2021 installment of the annual Bauder Lecture Series, Unsettling Landscapes at Cranbrook, brings six historians and experts to the Center’s virtual auditorium where they will help us explore, expand, and enrich our understanding of the histories associated with Cranbrook’s original 1904 Booth Estate, the 1915 Japanese Garden, and the 1950 Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Smith House.

Sunday, March 14th, 2021
From the desert vistas of Georgia O’Keefe’s New Mexico ranch to Winslow Homer’s studio on the rocky, windswept cost of southern Maine, the homes and studios of illustrious American artists are sites of extraordinary creativity. Forty-four of the nation’s most celebrated homes and studios have been part of a national coalition of independent museums, the Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. On February 10, 2021, the National Trust added four more sites to this prestigious network—one of them is Saarinen House. Join your friends at Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research as we both celebrate this milestone in the history of Saarinen House as a public museum and learn about some of the other forty-seven sites in this nationwide network.

11:00am-12:15pm EST | 7:00pm-8:15pm EST
Virtual Lecture Series

In the fourth annual installment of the Center’s popular series, Kevin Adkisson will examine the past ninety years of architecture history through the framework of distinguished architects who have lectured at Cranbrook and visited the Academy of Art.

Tuesday, October 27, 2020 |  10am & 7pm
Virtual Lecture

This lecture will present Eero Saarinen’s time studying and building at Yale within the context of his teenage years working with his parents in the development of Cranbrook, and the impact his time among the students at Cranbrook Academy of Art in the 1930s had on his trajectory as an architect.

Tuesday, September 22, 2020 |  10am & 7pm
Virtual Lecture

This lecture will trace Wright’s career as a collector of Japanese art, as an architect working in Tokyo, and the lifelong impact of Japanese architecture and gardens on Wright’s designs for American homes.

Virtual Lecture

This lecture will introduce the pedagogy and designs of the Bauhaus, and compare the German institution with our own Academy of Art. How were they similar? How were they different? How are the legacies of each intertwined, and where do they diverge? Join us for this special Uncovering Cranbrook lecture where we will attempt to answer: Is Cranbrook an American Bauhaus?

Virtual Lecture

Join Kevin Adkisson in this 50-minute survey of the weaving enterprise led by Loja Saarinen—Studio Loja Saarinen. Staffed by a team of Swedish immigrant weavers, the Studio produced rugs, curtains, and fabrics for use at Cranbrook and around the country. The lecture will review the Studio’s inception and operation, study the textile designs for Kingswood School for Girls, completed in the early 1930s, and focus on how Loja’s textiles were central to the vision of her husband, architect Eliel Saarinen.

Brendan Cormier, Senior Design Curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, discussed the exhibition he co-curated, “Cars,” with Center Director Greg Wittkopp in this virtual lecture. Cormier presents the car as a force for change and symbol of social, political, personal, and economic transformation. 

Join curator Kevin Adkisson for this five-part lecture series surveying the history of American architecture through the lens of Cranbrook’s distinct and impressive architectural history. Each seventy-five minute talk moves between the story of Cranbrook’s creation and the history of modern architecture.