For Mother Theresa, Mark Di Suvero, 1998. Photo by PD Rearick.
Cranbrook Academy of Art Library Entrance
Critical Studies
Critical Studies
Critical Studies
Articulating a vision of art and design as practices of distinctive experience and knowledge of the world
In addition to studio practice, students’ educational experience is fortified by our Program in Critical Studies, the academic section of our MFA/MArch degree. The Academy values criticality, historical awareness, and the act of making as a form of embodied thinking. Participation in Critical Studies is required for first-year students and optional for second-year students..
Through Critical Studies, students will call upon history as they work in experimental and exploratory spaces supported by robust centralized resources, including media and materials labs.
A richly curated schedule of visiting writers, artists, critics, fellows, and scholars supports the independent study and seminar model. These visitors help to bridge the disciplines of the Academy while making connections that broaden how we think about art, architecture, and design within a shared space created for interdisciplinary conversations.
Critical Studies
Areas of Focus
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1. Artistic Research
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2. Critical Practice
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3. Social Practice/Post-Studio Art
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4. Art Writing (Theory, History, Criticism)
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5. Philosophy + Critical Theory + Afro-Pessimism
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6. Architecture Discourse
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7. Detroit Colloquium
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8. Art + Pedagogy
Critical Studies group discussion with Michael Stone Richards, 2024-25 Academic Year. Photo by Benita Nnachortam (MFA Photography 2025).
Visiting Artists, Speakers, Scholars
Visiting Artists, Speakers, Scholars
2025-2026 Academic Year
For the 2026-2026 Academic year, the Program in Critical Studies welcomes:
- Sophia Larsen, Cranbrook alumna, as a Visiting Artist / Teaching Fellow supported by the Gilbert Family Foundation. In addition to her Teaching Fellowship, Sophia will develop a seminar on concepts of play in art practice following on from her recent work in the Cornell Summer School of Criticism and Theory.
- Dr. Marc Arthur, who will be directing a Guided Research introductory seminar on queer studies.
- Emerging thinker, scholar Suiyi Tang (doctoral candidate at University of Southern California) who will speak on Kay Sekimachi and the aesthetics of Japanese American abstraction drawing on metaphors of the loom and reproduction for Asian American women
- Emerging thinker, Sharon Liu, the inaugural Asymmetry Curatorial Fellow at the Sculpture Center in New York, will discuss her curatorial practice involving an archeology of Afro-Japanese art practice.
Academy Library
Cranbrook Art Museum with Orpheus Fountain by Carl Milles. Photo by James Haefner.
Kat Goffnett, Associate Curator of Collections in Collections Wing of Cranbrook Art Museum. Photo by PD Rearick.
Cranbrook Institute of Science. Photo by Stephen Holl.
Critical Studies
Critical Studies
Resources
At the Academy, MFA/MArch candidates have access to a range of resources to support their academic studies including but not limited to:
Michael Stone-Richards. Photo by Eric Perry.
Critical Studies
Critical Studies
Head of Critical Studies, Michael Stone-Richards
Michael Stone-Richards, Dean of Programs and Partnerships, and Head of Critical Studies, studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art, writing his PhD on Surrealism, philosophy, and psychoanalysis.
He has taught modern and contemporary art history and theory, philosophy, comparative literature, and French studies at Northwestern University, Stonehill College, Boston. He also taught critical practice and visual studies at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, MI for many years.
With the support of a Knight Foundation grant, Stone-Richards was the founding editor of Detroit Research, devoted to a broad comprehension of visual and critical studies in choreography, ceramics, performance, post-studio art / Social Practice, and critical theory.
His current research bears on questions concerning the ethics and politics of Care; pedagogy and transmission in the art + design school of the 21st – Century; curatorial practice; Blackness and biopolitics; the French analyst Solange Faladé; and the language of moral perfectionism in the work of Simone Weil, Guy Debord, and John Berger.