Shirley Woodson to Deliver Commencement Address at Cranbrook Academy of Art
This year, Cranbrook Academy of Art is honored to welcome acclaimed Detroit artist Shirley Woodson as this year’s Commencement speaker for the graduating class of 62 MFA and MArch students.The ceremony will be held on Cranbrook’s campus on May 13, 2022. It is closed to the public.A lifelong Detroiter, Woodson has been a creative force in the Detroit arts community for more than 60 years. A painter, her portraits depict her life, environment, and the history of the African American experience in the United States.Her solo exhibition, Shield of the Nile Reflections, is currently on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts through June 12, 2022. In the exhibition, Woodson presents her dream-like painting of Black bathers in rivers, honoring the diasporic myth that the Nile holds transformative and nurturing benefits for people of African descent.Woodson has been featured in over 30 solo exhibitions, and her paintings are included in more than 20 permanent collections throughout America, including the Detroit Institute of Arts, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Madison Madison, Studio Museum in Harlem, Toledo Art Commission (Ohio), The White House and The Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art.She is the recipient of MacDowell Residency, Creative Artists Grant, Detroit Council of the Arts and the New Initiatives for the Arts Exhibition Grant, NCA Award for Artistic Excellence, 1977, The DIA Alain Locke Award, 1998, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Lillian Benbow Award and numerous other awards and honors. In 2021, she was honored as a Kresge Eminent Artist Award Recipient because of her lifetime of work, including her efforts to ensure educational and career opportunities for all artists in the Detroit community.In 1974, she co-founded the Michigan chapter of the National Conference of Artists (NCA), the longest-running national arts organization dedicated to nurturing, developing, and promoting opportunities for Black visual artists. She was also an educator, beginning her teaching career in Detroit Public Schools (DPS) in 1960, then teaching at Highland Park Community College from 1966-1978, followed by contributions to Highland Park Schools as an art specialist from 1979-1992 before returning to DPS as supervisor of fine arts from 1992-2008.Woodson will deliver the keynote address to the graduating class. During the ceremony, an honorary Master of Fine Arts degree will also be presented in absentia to Olga de Amaral, an acclaimed fiber artist and sculptor who studied at the Academy from 1954-55. She is unable to attend the ceremony, so the degree will be accepted on her behalf by Cranbrook Art Museum Chief Curator Laura Mott, who recently curated the exhibition Olga de Amaral: To Weave a Rock, which was on view at Cranbrook Art Museum this winter and is available to view virtually on the Art Museum’s website at cranbrookartmuseum.org.
