behind-the-scenes tour and exhibition
cranbrook school and the historic cranbrook print collection
March 20 through March 30, 2025
Thursdays: 1:00, 3:00, and 5:30pm
Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays: 1:00 and 3:00pm
Cranbrook Art Museum
39221 Woodward Avenue
Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304
$40 per person
Limited to 18 guests per tour
Tours begin at the Cranbrook Art Museum Front Desk. Free Parking is available in the Art Museum parking lot, on the east side of the museum. Please note that this is an exterior and interior walking tour and will include steps and stairs. In case of inclement weather and the closure of Cranbrook Art Museum, tours will be rescheduled or refunded.
Presented by Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research in Collaboration with Cranbrook Schools
Project Curator:
Mariam Hale, 2023-2025 Collections Fellow, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
Join the Center as we open the doors to the original Cranbrook School for Boys for special art and architecture tours, featuring the school's historic print collection. Originally designed in the 1920s as a school for boys in the seventh through twelfth grades, the campus and its interior spaces—which are rarely opened for public tours—are now part of Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School, Cranbrook Schools' co-education division for high school students. The care of Cranbrook Schools' rich collection of historic furnishings and works of art—and prints—is entrusted to Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
Led by the Center's educators, the tours will explore the picturesque architecture and interior spaces of the complex, including the Quadrangle, Dining Hall, Assembly Hall, restored North "Map" Lobby, and one of Cranbrook's architectural jewels, the Library Reading Room. Along the way, you will discover selections from the historic Cranbrook School Print Collection, including works by the Italian master, Giambattista Piranesi.
Highlights of the Tour
Your tour will begin under the open peristyle of Cranbrook Art Museum, Eliel Saarinen's final architectural contribution to Cranbrook's constellation of cultural institutions. A Center Collections Interpreter will lead you from the museum, along the Triton Pools, and through the Arts and Crafts Court, the studio buildings which became the foundation for Cranbrook Academy of Art. Outdoor sculptures by the Swedish master Carl Milles and playful architectural features will animate your journey to the main feature of the tour: the historic campus of the original Cranbrook School for Boys, now part of Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School.
The Cranbrook School campus was designed by Eliel Saarinen and completed in the late 1920s, just after the opening of the school in 1927. Its design draws inspiration from the college quadrangles of Oxford and Cambridge, the palaces of Venice, and the Arts and Crafts Movement. Saarinen's buildings present a harmonious blend of medieval and modern design, enhanced by artworks placed in the Quadrangle or set into the walls of the buildings. Stonework carved on site by Hungarian sculptor Géza Maróti, metalwork designed by Eero and Eliel Saarinen and executed in the Cranbrook blacksmith shop, and a replica of a twelfth-century fountain at Monreale Cathedral in Palermo are just some of the surprising details that await discovery in the Quadrangle and courtyards.
Students at Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School still sit down every day for meals and fellowship in the Dining Hall, a monumental room lit by patterned panes of leaded glass and chandeliers assembled by Eliel Saarinen from hancrafted Swedish shades. A wrought iron clock by German-American sculptor Oscar Bach denotes each hour with a different craft; as the hands move around the dial, they point in turn to each craftsperson—a potter, glassblower, draughtsman, or bookbinder.
The tour continues in Hoey Hall, the main school building, containing classrooms, lounges, and the library, which will house the print exhibition. The tour will visit the South Lobby where a wall of Pewabic tile surrounds the fireplace, set with ceramic sculptures of athletes, designed by Eero Saarinen. On the south wall hangs Luca Carlevarijs's painting The Piazetta, Venice, painted in the early eighteenth century and purchased by George Booth in 1926 for this space—one of many fine artworks selected by the Booths for the school, which you will encounter on the tour. Carlevarijs's work represents Venice's inspiring role in the shaping of Cranbrook School, prompting students and visitors alike to look again at the Quadrangle's buildings with an eye for their allusions to Venetian architecture.
Down the wood-paneled hallway of classrooms, a print from the school collection will be reinstalled in its historic location: an etching of Cranbrook School's namesake in Sydney, Australia, by the Australian post-impressionist painter Sydney Long.
The spiraling stairs that lead to the upper floors of Hoey Hall are guarded by a bronze figure of the Greek philospher Diogenes, sculpted by George Edwin Bissell. Diogenes originally belonged to George and Ellen Booth, who displayed the sculpture in Cranbrook House in 1918. The upper lobby is lit by a large stained glass window depicting Christopher Columbus, framed by his arms and those of Isabella of Aragon. The window was made by G. Owen Bonawit, a stained-glass artist whose work was also installed in the library of Cranbrook House. He is best known for the hundreds of panels he designed for the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University. The subject of Columbus's journey to North America reappears later in the tour, in the North Lobby.
The vaulted ceiling of the Assembly Hall made it an elegant and acoustically ideal space for concerts and lectures, before the adaptation of a gymnasium into the Performing Arts Center, elsewhere on campus.
One of Cranbrook School's most distinctive spaces, the North Lobby boasts a floor-to-ceiling mural, a map of North America painted in 1928 by John Hession Jr. On the map, the routes taken to North America from Europe, first by Scandinavian settlers led by Leif Erikson, and later by Christopher Columbus, are marked on the mural, which also shows Columbus's three ships on the ocean. The mural is framed by carved wooden beams, which line an open balcony overlooking the lobby. Here, two prints from the historic collection will be on view, temporarily returned to the places they occupied in 1928.
The tour will conclude in the Library Reading Room, with a discussion of Géza Maróti's monumental relief sculpture, The Gift of Knowledge, followed by time to explore the print exhibition. All the prints that historically hung in Cranbrook School, and which remain in the Cranbrook Educational Community's collections, will be available to view, along with additional works by two artists from the collection: Giambattista Piranesi and Axel Herman Haig. Visitors will be invited to experience the prints as Cranbrook students once did, by sitting and studying the works on display in the Reading Room, and exploring artworks stored in archival Solander boxes, with interpretation provided by the project's curator, Center Collections Fellow Mariam Hale.
PRINT EXHIBITION ARTIST HIGHLIGHTS
GIAMBATTISTA PIRANESI (1720-1778)
"I turn the proud portfolios
Which hold the grand designs
Of Salvator, of Guercino,
And Piranesi's lines."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ode to Beauty
An etcher, engraver, amateur archaeologist, and self-identified architect (though he only ever designed one building), Piranesi's etchings of the ruins of ancient Rome and Renaissance monuments transformed his contemporaries' view of the classical world. Piranesi was one of the first artists to produce accurate, detailed images of the Roman temples, palaces, and homes scattered through the city, many of which were deteriorating due to neglect. Because of the relative cheapness and portability of prints, Piranesi's works were soon known across Europe. His ability to convey not just the appearance but also the grandeur and pathos of Roman ruins enchanted the artists and writers of Neoclassical and Romantic movements alike.
George Booth collected dozens of prints by Piranesi for the Cranbrook collections; in 1952, ten of his prints hung in Cranbrook School. This exhibition will feature historic Cranbrook School prints as well as highlights from the Cranbrook Art Museum collection.
AXEL HERMAN HAIG (1835-1921)
"To those whom fortune has given leisure to experience these things the Haig etchings are mementoes; to those who have seen no city but their own they are an earnest of life's possibilities."
—Lewis Hind, in The Art Journal, 1892
Born in Gotland, Sweden, and trained as a ship designer and architect before taking up etching, Axel Haig was an acclaimed designer as well as an artist. In collaboration with the medieval revival architect William Burges, he produced watercolor renderings of his proposed designs for some of Victorian Britain's most striking interiors. Haig did not take up etching until he was already well-established as an architect for the Ecclesiastical Commission, but it was in this medium that he would be best known by his contemporaries.
Haig travelled widely in search of subjects to etch, putting his experience as a draftsman and church architect to use by producing meticulous studies of the medieval cathedrals and churches of Europe, and venturing to North Africa to depict the mosques and streets of Cairo. Haig also produced a number of architectural fantasies, combining the features of widespread buildings in an imaginary historical scene, or envisioning how a ruined cathedral might have looked when it was still whole. His works opened up the old world of Europe to those, such as Cranbrook's students, who might not have yet been able to visit them in person. The Booths purchased works by Haig for Cranbrook School and the Art Library as well as for their own enjoyment at Cranbrook House.
PRINTS FROM CRANBROOK HOUSE
Alongside the historic Cranbrook School collection, the exhibition will also feature works from Cranbrook House, displayed in the home of George and Ellen Booth between 1914 and 1949. The Booths favored many of the same artists whose work they gifted to the schools, especially Alex Haig and Scotsman Andrew Affleck. Always a lover of great architecture, George Booth probably chose many of these prints, depicting ancient churches and cathedrals.
The oldest, and largest print in the collection is one of the few that are not architectural studies; instead, this is an engraving of the Vatican fresco The Battle of the Milvian Bridge, designed by Raphael in 1520. The engraver Pietro Aquila created this print in 1722, as part of a large folio of prints reproducing works of art by Raphael in Rome. The print was once folded up in the book and unfolded to be seen; in the Cranbrook House copy, which is framed, the creases from its original book format are still visible.
ABOUT THE PROJECT CURATOR
As Collections Fellow, Mariam Hale is engaged in investigating the history and significance of the Founders Collection at Cranbrook House. She recently completed her PhD in Art History at the University of York, where her research explored the role of fantasy in Victorian painting. Her MLitt thesis at the University of St. Andrews delved into the often comical and surprisingly affecting world of late nineteenth-century domestic interior design manuals. A graduate of Williams College in Kansas City, Missouri, Mariam has previously served as an intern at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, as Assistant Curator at the Ralph T. Coe Foundation for the Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and as a staff writer and editor for the Cultural Property News. She is a contributing author in The Cambridge History of Arthurian Literature and Culture, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press in 2025.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
WHEN YOU ARRIVE
Free parking is available at Cranbrook Art Museum. Overflow parking is available a short distance away at the Cranbrook Institute of Science Parking Deck.
TOURS
The tours will be approximately 90 minutes long and will include walking across the campus and will include several steps and stairs. Many of the spaces are not ADA-accessible.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Photography is permitted on the tours for personal use only. No special equipment or tripods may be brought on the tours.
COATS AND BAGS
Only small wallets and handheld cameras are permitted on the tours. Please leave all backpacks, purses, camera bags, camera equipment, and other cumbersome items in vehicles. This policy was created for the security and protection of the items on the campus and in Cranbrook School.
REFUND POLICY
Tickets are non-refundable. Your ticket may be transferred to another participant for the tour on the same day and time as the original ticket.
INCLEMENT WEATHER
These late winter tours will take place rain, snow, or shine. Tours will be cancelled for inclement weather only if Cranbrook Art Museum closes to the public. Cranbrook Art Museum's closures will be posted on both the Center's and the Art Museum's websites. If a tour is cancelled, you will be contacted by the Center and your tour will be rescheduled or your fee will be refunded.
SERVICE ANIMAL POLICY
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research is glad to accomodate visitors accompanied by service animals, as defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on tours of buildings and spaces of the Cranbrook campus. Under the ADA, a "service animal" is defined as a dog that has been individually trained to do work or perform tasks for an individual with a disability. The task(s) performed by the dog must be directly related to the person's disability. Regretfully, we cannot accomodate visitors accompanied by emotional support animals or pets. Visitors who will be accompanied by service animals are welcome to call the Center at (248) 645-3307 in advance of their scheduled tour so that we may address any questions or concerns.
CONTACT INFORMATION
For additional information on the Center and its programs, email center@cranbrook.edu or call (248) 645-3307.
ABOUT CRANBROOK CENTER FOR COLLECTIONS AND RESEARCH
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research reveals the Cranbrook story and offers intellectual and experiential engagement with its legacy. By sustaining and interpreting the community's unparalleled landscape, architecture, collections, and archives, the Center provides memorable educational experiences and meaningful research opportunities for regional, national, and international audiences.
PHOTO CREDITS
Banner image: Cranbrook Campus Library Reading Room and Overmantle, 2019; Photography by P.D. Rearick, CAA '10.
Cranbrook School Tower Stairs and Diogenes Statue, 2021; Photography by James Haefner.
Giambattista Piranesi, Villa Panfili Fuori di Porta S. Pancrazio, 1776. Courtesy Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
Cranbrook Academy of Art Arts and Crafts Court, 2022; Photography by James Haefner.
"Beauty Arch" at Cranbrook School for Boys, 1950; Photography by Harvey Croze. Courtesy Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
Cranbrook Campus Dining Hall, 2022; Photography by James Haefner.
Hoey Hall South Lobby, 1928; Photography by Peter Nyholm. Courtesy Cranbrook Archives.
Hoey Hall Assembly Hall, 1935; Photography by Richard Askew, Courtesy Cranbrook Archives.
North "Map" Lobby in Hoey Hall, 2019; Photography by Daniel Smith.
Cranbrook Campus Library Reading Room, 2016; Photography by Colton Graub.
Giambattista Piranesi, Veduta della Basilica di S.Paolo fuor della Mura, circa 1748. Courtesy Cranbrook Art Museum.
Axel Herman Haig, The Morning of the Festival, 1880. Courtesy Cranbrook Art Museum.
Detail of The Battle of Milvian Bridge engraving by Petro Aquila, 1722; Photography by Sophie Russell-Jeffrey, 2024. Courtesy Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
Photo of Mariam Hale in the Cranbrook House Library, 2023; Photography by Kevin Adkisson. Courtesy of Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
Cranbrook Campus Quadrangle, 2019; Photography by Daniel Smith.