Sonya Clark to Deliver Cranbrook Academy of Art Commencement Address
Sonya Clark
Bloomfield Hills, Mich., May 9, 2023 – Cranbrook Academy of Art is pleased to announce that pioneering fiber artist Sonya Clark will be the institution’s Commencement speaker at this year’s ceremony on May 12, 2023. The Academy is proud to confer Master of Fine Arts and Master of Architecture degrees upon 68 graduating students this year.Clark graduated from Cranbrook Academy of Art with an MFA in Fiber in 1995 and also received a Mid-Career Distinguished Alumni Award from the institution in 2011.Throughout her prolific career, Clark often uses everyday fiber materials—hair, flags, and found fabric—to examine issues of history, racial injustice, cultural legacies, and reconciliation. She is best known for artwork that honors contemporary craftspeople like hairdressers and notable African American figures, including entrepreneur and activist Madam C.J. Walker and former President Obama.Over the course of her accomplished career, Clark has received awards such as a United States Artists Fellowship, a Pollock Krasner Award, an 1858 Prize, an Art Prize Grand Jurors Award, and an Anonymous Was a Woman Award. Her work has been exhibited in more than 500 museums and galleries in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Australia. She is a Professor of Art at Amherst College in Massachusetts and previously served as Chair of the Craft/Material Studies Department at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.In June, Cranbrook Art Museum will debut Clark’s newest exhibition, Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other, which brings together her large-scale community-centered, and participatory projects for the first time. It will run from June 17 to September 24, 2023, before moving on to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City.
Media Contact:Julie FrackerDirector of Communications248.645.3329 officejfracker@cranbrook.edu
