Senghor Reid to Deliver Cranbrook Academy of Art Commencement Address

Bloomfield Hills, Mich., April 18, 2024 – Cranbrook Academy of Art is pleased to announce that artist Senghor Reid will be the institution’s commencement speaker at this year’s ceremony on May 10, 2024. The Academy is proud to confer Master of Fine Arts degrees upon 59 graduating students this year.

Reid is a Detroit-born artist whose work explores the interactions between the human body and the environment, creating visual representations of dreams, memories, and traces of human contact with nature. His work was recently on view in the exhibition, Skilled Labor: Black Realism in Detroit at Cranbrook Art Museum. He currently serves as both Artist-in-Residence and Chair of the Fine Arts department of Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School.

He has received numerous awards, including a Kresge Visual Arts Fellowship in 2009 and the Governor’s Award for Emerging Artists in Michigan in 2001. His work has been exhibited worldwide including at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; Kentler International Drawing Space, New York; and St. Catharines Museum, Canada. His work is also held in many public, private, and corporate art collections. Recently, he has participated in a series of public art projects and will present a solo exhibition at M Contemporary Art in Ferndale, Mich., in October of this year.

Reid holds a BFA from the University of Michigan and MA in Teaching from Wayne State University, and also attended the Marathon Program at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture.

He was the subject of a special American Masters episode on PBS in 2023. “Senghor Reid: Make Way for Tomorrow” can be viewed here.