Cranbrook Academy of Art Announces the 2014 [FALL] Edition Lecture Series
Bloomfield Hills, Mich., Sept. 15, 2014 — In its sixth season, the [FALL] Edition Lecture Series at Cranbrook Academy of Art kicks off today, offering a unique opportunity to discuss a variety of contemporary creative practices. All lectures are structured to explore all forms of innovative inquiry from the vantage point of artists, critics, and scholars.
Lectures are held in Cranbrook Art Museum’s deSalle Auditorium and are free to ArtMembers and students with identification. For the general public, they are included with Museum admission. The Museum galleries will be open prior to each lecture. Parking is available in the Cranbrook Art Museum parking lot and in the parking deck next to the Institute of Science.
September 15, 4pm
Cranbrook Academy of Art Artist-in-Residence Lectures, “Good Luck, Bad Luck, Chance and Failure”
Mark Newport, Beverly Fishman, Bill Massie
September 16, 4pm
Cranbrook Academy of Art Artist-in-Residence Lectures, “Good Luck, Bad Luck, Chance and Failure”
Heather McGill, Scott Klinker, Elliott Earls, Iris Eichenberg
September 17, 4pm
Cranbrook Academy of Art Artist-in-Residence Lectures, “Good Luck, Bad Luck, Chance and Failure”
Liz Cohen, Randy Bolton, Anders Ruhwald
September 19, 4pm
Jane Lackey
Visual Artist
“Mapping Active-Passive”
Sponsored by the Warner Lecture Fund and the Fiber Department
Jane Lackey is not only a 1979 graduate of Cranbrook Academy of Art, she also served as an Artist-in-Residence and Head of Fiber Department from 1997 through 2007. In her lecture at Cranbrook, Lackey will discuss influences and resources that have guided the trajectory of her work over time. Long engaged in cross-disciplinary intersections, Lackey’s artworks infuse materials and process with active thinking. Conceptual ideas are slowly traced, entwined and materialized in drawings, sculpture, and installations. Her work has been exhibited in venues including Wellcome Trust, London; Contemporary Art Space, Osaka; I Space, Chicago; Exit Art, NYC; Tang Museum, Syracuse; Detroit Institute of Arts; The Art Gym; Bellevue Art Museum and New Mexico Museum of Art. Prior to her appointment at Cranbook, Lackey served as Head of the Fiber Department at Kansas City Art Institute. She is currently an independent artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
September 21, 4pm
Shelley Selim
Jeanne and Ralph Graham Collections Fellow at Cranbrook Art Museum
Scott Klinker
Designer-in-Residence for 3D Design at Cranbrook Academy of Art
“The Living Structures of Ken Isaacs: A Conversation with Shelley Selim and Scott Klinker”
Sponsored by Cranbrook Art Museum
Ken Isaacs’s Living Structures—hand-made, low-cost, multifunctional furniture and architectural units—challenged ideas of how people could sit, work, and live within their own homes and the broader built environment. In her curator’s talk, Shelley Selim will examine how the former Cranbrook Academy of Art student and instructor radically deconstructed conventional notions of modernism during the mid-century. Immediately afterward, Selim will be joined by Cranbrook Academy of Art 3D Designer-in-Residence Scott Klinker for a gallery discussion about the impact of Isaacs’s work on contemporary design practice.
September 25, 6pm
David Cabianca
“An Afternoon with David Cabianca”
September 28, 3pm
Geoffrey Reynolds
The Mary Riepma Ross Director of the Joint Archives of Holland at Hope College
“Plastic Fantastic: Michigan’s Boat Building Industry and the Use of Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic (FRP)”
Sponsored by Cranbrook Art Museum
The history of building fiberglass boats in Michigan began in the early 1950s. Like many states in the United States following WWII, Michigan began experimenting with reinforced fiberglass plastic (FRP) in the construction of many objects. From this new boat building material sprang an entire industry that provided consumers with safe, low maintenance, affordable pleasure on the water and hundreds of jobs for local craftsmen. Today, fiberglass and craftsman still come together to provide a solid economic footing for many Michigan residents.
September 29, 6pm
Pan Gongkai
Professor and President of the China Central Academy of Fine Arts
“Ink Painting as a Sample of Chinese Contemporary Art”
Prof. Pan Gongkai will discuss the growing interest in “New Ink” art both domestically and internationally. He will address the questions ink painting traditions confront today, in a time when the medium has to build relevance within today’s contemporary art practice. Pan Gongkai will present his own art practices to highlight the alternative ways he combines tradition with contemporary – contemporary installation work with ink elements, contemporary video installations presenting reflections on Chinese aesthetic mechanics behind ink painting, and ink painting practices developed from self-discipline and the evolution of tradition.
Pan Gongkai is an internationally renowned artist, theoretician, and educator. He is the current President of the China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing and a former president of the China Academy of Art (CAA) in Hangzhou. Melt, his recent and large-scale digital installation, was featured at the 54th Venice Biennale. His ink paintings have been exhibited in major art museums in Beijing, Hong Kong, Macau, New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo. He is the author of many publications and an active researcher. Over the last ten years, he directed a comprehensive research study on modern Chinese art, titled The Road of Chinese Modern Art, the results of which were published in 2012, and are now critically influencing Chinese scholarship on the liberal arts.
October 2, 6pm
Jacob Gaboury
Assistant Professor of Digital Media and Visual Culture at Stony Brook University
“On Uncomputable Numbers: Toward a Queer History of Computing”
Sponsored by Studio Council
What makes a computer queer? This lecture advances a queer theory of computing through a set of foundational queer figures in the early history of computation and mathematics. Drawing on the long history of queer engagements with the anti-social, the negative, and the outside, Gaboury identifies queerness in the breakdown and failure of technical systems, and in theories of uncomputability first articulated by Alan Turing in the 1930s.
Jacob Gaboury is a staff writer for the art and technology organization Rhizome at the New Museum for Contemporary Art.
October 5, 4pm
Eric Shiner
Director of The Andy Warhol Museum
“Andy Warhol and his World”
Sponsored by Cranbrook Art Museum
Eric Shiner is the Director of The Andy Warhol Museum, the most comprehensive single-artist museum in the world, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At The Warhol Museum, Shiner organized Factory Direct: Pittsburgh, an exhibition that showcased the artwork of 14 established contemporary artists invited to conduct artist residencies in Pittsburgh-based factories. In addition, Shiner led The Warhol team in creating Andy Warhol: 15 Minutes Eternal, the largest traveling exhibition of Warhol artwork in Asia, as well as the first retrospective of appropriation artist Deborah Kass, titled Before and Happily Ever After.
Shiner is a scholar of contemporary Japanese art and a leading authority on Andy Warhol.
October 7, 6pm
Joseph Tanke
Associate Professor and Chair of the Graduate Program in Philosophy, University of Hawaii, Manoa
“Part One: Classical Aesthetics”
Sponsored by the Critical Studies and Humanities Program
The first lecture as part of Joseph Tanke’s Critical Studies residential fellowship at Cranbrook Academy of Art will examine the very idea of the aesthetic as it was first constituted within classical German philosophy. It is proposed that this word, “aesthetics,” is used far too expansively in contemporary discussions of art and culture, and that it is in fact best reserved for naming the interdisciplinary conversation in philosophy, literary theory, art theory, and the sciences inaugurated by the publication of Alexander Baumgarten’s Aesthetica in 1750.
Tanke is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Graduate Program in Philosophy at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. He has published and lectured extensively on issues in aesthetics, art theory, Continental philosophy, and the history of philosophy.
October 8, 6pm
Be Original Americas Panel Discussion
(Rob Kirkbride, Joseph Connell, Felicia Ferrone, Scott Klinker, Clark Malcolm, Antoine Roset)
“Nuts, Bolts and Creativity: A Look at the Work that Goes into Original Design”
Sponsored by Be Original Americas
Rob Kirkbride, Senior Editor for The Monday Morning Quarterback, delves into the hard work, time, effort and money that goes into creating truly original design, reinforcing the idea that original design does not come “free” and therefore isn’t free to steal! His esteemed panelists will be Joseph Connell, Principal, Perkins+Will (Chicago); Felicia Ferrone, Principal of fferrone design and independent curator and educator; Scott Klinker, Designer-in-Residence at Cranbrook Academy of Art; Clark Malcolm, Writer/Editor for Herman Miller; and Antoine Roset, Executive Vice President, Ligne Roset/Roset USA and Vice President and Charter Member of Be Original Americas.
Formed in 2012, Be Original Americas is an association of like-minded consumers, design professionals, educators, institutions, and businesses who recognize the critical importance of original design and are committed to the protection of its consumers and authors. Together they seek to inform, educate, and influence – promoting the vital social and economic interests that are inherently linked to the integrity of authentic design.
October 12, 4pm
Gregory Wittkopp
Director of Cranbrook Art Museum and the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
Iris Eichenberg
Artist-in-Residence and Head of Metalsmithing at Cranbrook Academy of Art
“Studio to Factory: Paul Evans’s (Eight-Month) Education at Cranbrook”
Sponsored by Cranbrook Art Museum
Although brief, the time Paul Evans spent as a student in the studios of Cranbrook Academy of Art—his final year of formal education—was a formative chapter in his life. It was at Cranbrook that he was exposed to the world of art outside the realm of metalsmithing, and where he began to develop a style that was as indebted to contemporary currents in the fields of painting, sculpture, and ceramics as it was to the Scandinavian tradition of metalsmithing that he had honed at the School for American Craftsmen in Rochester. While several more years would pass before he developed the sculpted and faceted furniture that defined his career, it was at Cranbrook that this direction began to take form. Following the lecture, join Gregory Wittkopp and Iris Eichenberg in the galleries as they engage in a conversation about Paul Evans’s work.
October 14, 6pm
Todd Shalom
Director/Founder of Elastic City
“Elastic City and the Participatory Walk”
Sponsored by Studio Council
Todd Shalom works with text, sound, and image to re-contextualize the body using vocabulary of the everyday. Shalom will discuss poetic decision making, how artists adapt to the walk form, and how Elastic City plays with its own form as a method of survival. Todd Shalom is the founder and Director of Elastic City. Todd’s work has been presented by organizations such as Abrons Art Center, Creative Time, ISSUE Project Room, The Kitchen, The Museum of Modern Art, The New Museum, P.S.122 and Printed Matter. He is a graduate of the MFA Writing Program at California College of the Arts and also holds a BS in Business Administration from Boston University. Todd is a member of the core faculty in Pratt Institute’s MFA in Writing program.
October 16, 7pm
Joel Stone
Senior Curator of the Detroit Historical Society
“Boom Town: Detroit in the Roaring ‘20s”
Co-sponsored by the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research and the Detroit Historical Society
From the dust and smoke of the nineteenth century, Detroit burst into the national spotlight in the early twentieth century. The automobile business was at full throttle, resulting in a city that grew faster than any other on the continent. Adding to the excitement and intrigue, national Prohibition created a demand for alcohol that our Canadian neighbors gladly addressed. Rum running became the region’s second largest industry. Conventions loved Detroit, and so did organized crime. Boom Town meets the Wild West.
October 26, 4pm
Gerhardt Knodel
Artist
“Let The Games Begin!”
Co-sponsored by Cranbrook Art Museum and Wasserman Projects
The field of textiles, once relatively isolated, now is an ubiquitous medium freely used in all disciplines of art. Knodel has worked through that history, and in a new body of work its probing fresh associations with the textile medium in relation to contemporary issues and opportunity to function in this time as an agent of change.
Following a long and eventful journey at Cranbrook Academy of Art where he was head of the Fiber Department (1970-1995) and Director of the Academy (1995-2007), Knodel returned to full-time studio practice in 2008. A selection of his new work will be on display at Wasserman Projects from September 20 through November 7, 2014.
October 28, 6pm
David Jablonowski
Artist
“Stone Carving High Performance”
Sponsored by the Metalsmithing and Sculpture Departments
The lecture will follow a format which brings together the work-and thinking process of sculptor and installation artist David Jablonowski. Jablonowski (born in Bochum, Germany in 1982) artistically examines the surface and the evolution of contemporary communication technologies. In the form of sculptures, videos, and installations, he focuses on the development of language as a technically reproducible code and aesthetic production with regard to the communication of knowledge and information. Based in Amsterdam, artist David Jablonowski held large scale solo-exhibitions at venues such as BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, UK; Kunstverein Muenster, Germany; Gemeente Museum Den Hague, The Netherlands; and Dallas Contemporary, Dallas Texas.
October 30, 6pm
Giulio Cappellini
Designer
“Cappellini Dream”
Sponsored by the 3D Department + Haworth Inc.
Giulio Cappellini is director of the world-famous Italian furniture manufacturer Cappellini. The Milanese architect has worked since 1979 with the spirit and the aims of a man in continuous renewal. Over the years, his work has become the designer’s choice in contemporary design, both for bringing his brand name into the world, and as art director of other important design brands. Cappellini’s more important project, the “company,” transformed Cappellini into one of the biggest “trend setters” worldwide.
November 4, 6pm
Chris Tysh
“An Evening with Chris Tysh”
November 6, 7pm
Portia Vescio
Assistant Director of the University Archives at Michigan State University
“Scandals, Scalawags and (Un) Savory Stories”
Co-sponsored by the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research and the Michigan State University Archives & Historical Collections
We all love our alma maters, but how well do we really know them? Using documents and photographs, archivist Portia Vescio recalls some of the more scandalous people and events from Michigan State University’s history. From students in open rebellion to undercover Pinkerton agents, these stories show how the college overcame adversity and how sometimes a bad situation turned into a beautiful friendship.
November 7, 4pm
John Underkoffler
Founder of Oblong Industries, Inc.
“An Afternoon with John Underkoffler”
November 11, 6pm
Joseph Tanke
Associate Professor and Chair of the Graduate Program in Philosophy, University of Hawaii, Manoa
“Part Two: Contemporary Aesthetics”
Sponsored by the Critical Studies and Humanities Program
This second lecture as part of Tanke’s Critical Studies residential fellowship will unfold as a critical overview of the various ways in which the idea of the aesthetic has recently been appropriated for different ethical and political projects. While Tanke will explain how these strategies were to some degree marked out by Kant’s Critique of Judgment (1790), or anticipated by Friedrich Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind (1795), our attention will be directed at the recent arguments found in the writings of Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Rancière.
November 13, 7pm
Frank Boles
Director of Central Michigan University’s Clarke Historical Library
“Up North with the Hemingways”
Co-sponsored by the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research and the Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University
In 1899, Dr. Clarence Hemingway and his wife Grace Hall Hemingway purchased property on Walloon Lake near Petoskey and constructed a summer cottage. Their son Ernest would make the people who lived in and near the cottage, as well as the surrounding lakes and communities, internationally famous through the stories and books he wrote. But before he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and before he published his first story, “Ernie” spent all of his summers “Up North” as just another summer person with his family, the Hemingways. Listen to the fascinating stories of those simple, family summers, as well as more about the “Up North” experience the family lived from 1900 to 1921.
November 16, 4pm
Shanna Merola
Photographer and Social Activist
“Bearing Witness: Art as Activism”
Sponsored by Cranbrook Art Museum in collaboration with Cranbrook Institute of Science and the exhibition Women of Vision: National Geographic’s Photographers on Assignment.
Shanna Merola is an artist committed to grassroots activism and the role that photography plays in creating social justice. In her lecture, Merola will share images from her recent assignment in Ferguson, Missouri, where she documented the heightened militarization of Mike Brown’s neighborhood as the community rallied to protest the response of the police. Images of armored vehicles in residential areas and police in riot gear hold a striking resemblance to Merola’s previous body of work “Black Day in July,” based on the Detroit Rebellion of 1967. She will make connections between the two uprisings, including interviews with Detroit residents who experienced the events of 1967 firsthand.
November 18, 6pm
Lane Relyea
Writer and Educator
“How Flextimers and Networkers Have Re-shaped the Institution of Art”
Sponsored by the Critical Studies and Humanities Program
As with other professionals, artists have been lured into social life as the social itself has become increasingly ensnared within the logic of labor valuation and economic exchange — that is, as services and short-term contracts have shifted emphasis away from factory jobs and commodity production and onto individual “human capital” and its improvised, on-demand performances. As a result, the art world today develops beyond a formerly dominant system comprised of the studio, gallery, and museum. The new system of standardization is what this lecture will address — a system that dictates conformity in the production, distribution and reception of not art objects but rather of artists themselves and the limits and expectations guiding their interaction. Relyea teaches in the Department of Art Theory & Practice at Northwestern University and is the editor-in-chief of Art Journal. He has written widely on contemporary art since 1983, and his book Your Everyday Art World, which explores the effects of communication networks on artistic practice and its contexts, was published last year by MIT Press.
December 9, 6pm
Anthony Byrt
Director of Research at Auckland’s Whitecliffe College of Arts & Design
“Clammy Pipes, and Other First World Problems”
Sponsored by the Critical Studies and Humanities Program
Since leaving Michigan last year after a Critical Studies Fellowship at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Detroit has been nagging at Anthony Byrt – so much so that he decided to write about it in his forthcoming book that examines the impact of globalization on contemporary New Zealand art. In this lecture, Anthony will focus on the work of New Zealand photographer Yvonne Todd, framing it in relation to questions of suburbia and monstrosity. The lecture will deal with sex, cars, passive-aggressive teenagers, Mike Kelley and Matthew Barney, and end up either on Auckland’s North Shore, or somewhere south of 8 Mile, or both – two sides, Byrt will argue, of the same modern coin.
Byrt is a New Zealand art writer and currently the Director of Research at Auckland’s Whitecliffe College of Arts & Design, where he oversees the Critical Studies components of the MFA program.
Cranbrook Academy of Art
Cranbrook Academy of Art is the country’s top ranked, graduate-only program in architecture, design, and fine art. Each year, just 75 students are invited to study and live on our landmark Saarinen-designed campus, which features private studios, state-of-the art workshops, a renowned Art Museum, and 300 acres of forests, lakes, and streams, all a short drive from the red-hot art, design, and music scene of Detroit. The focus at Cranbrook is on studio practice in one of ten disciplines: Architecture, 2D and 3D Design, Ceramics, Fiber, Metalsmithing, Painting, Photography, Print Media, and Sculpture. The program is anchored by celebrated Artists- and Designers-in-Residence, one for each discipline, all of whom live and practice on campus alongside our students. For more information, visit us atwww.cranbrookart.edu.
