Critical Studies Program
Because Cranbrook is a small and graduate-only institution, the academic program is flexible and spontaneous, responsive to student and faculty interests. Whether it takes the form of lectures, discussions, student-initiated symposia, critiques with visiting curators, reading groups with guest thinkers or debates in the studio kitchens, the freedom of the academic program at Cranbrook is truly unique.
The Academy offers a Critical Studies program developed each year to respond to the most current intellectual discourse within contemporary architecture, art, and design. As the Academy does not follow the conventions of required classes or a fixed curriculum, Critical Studies is one of the ways we offer structure and support for students – inside and outside the studio.
The Critical Studies program is offered to all students at the Academy and is designed to foster inter-departmental exchange through a series of lectures, discussions, debates, films and seminars. Each fall semester, a visiting Critical Studies Fellow is in residence at the Academy. Selected for their perspectives on contemporary theory and culture studies, the visiting Fellow presents public lectures, conducts student discussion groups and is an active presence in studio critiques and reviews.
The program also includes a rich year-long public lecture series that includes artists and designers visiting our ten departments, as well as critics and scholars brought to campus by the Cranbrook Art Museum, and the Critical Studies program itself. Because the Academy is not bound by a formulaic educational structure, all types of thinkers - artists, designers, philosophers, activists, historians, scientists and writers – are invited to present ways to link one’s studio practice with larger and more diverse communities, national and international.
2012 SPRING EDITION LECTURE SERIES
All lectures begin at 6:00 pm in the Cranbrook Art Museum's deSalle Auditorium, unless otherwise noted. Please use the Library entrance for all public lectures. Parking is available in the Cranbrook Art Museum parking lot and in the parking deck next to the Institute of Science. For directions to the Auditorium, please visit here.
Tuesday, January 17
Mimi Nguyen + Minh-Ha Pham
Nguyen: Assistant Professor, Gender and Women's Studies & Asian American Studies, University of Illinois
Pham: Assistant Professor, History of Art & Visual Studies & Asian American Studies, Cornell University
"Threadbared PDA, Public Displays of Academia/Aesthetics"
Sponsored by the Critical Studies Program
Minh-Ha T. Pham is an Assistant Professor in the History of Art & Visual Studies Department and the Asian American Studies Program at Cornell University. Broadly, her research traces the historical relations of art, society, and technology through fashion. She is the co-founder of Threadbared, a research blog on the politics of fashion and beauty. Minh-Ha's other web projects include Of Another Fashion, a digital archive that focuses on the everyday material cultures and practices of U.S. women of color.
Mimi Thi Nguyen is Assistant Professor of Gender and Women's Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She pursues her scholarship through the frame of transnational feminist cultural studies, and in particular as an untangling of the liberal way of war that pledges "aid," freedom, rights, movement, and other social goods. She is also co-author of the research blog on dress and beauty Threadbared with Minh-Ha Pham – which several academic feminist journals have cited as a valuable addition to feminist critical studies. She is currently compiling a collection of her zine writings on race, punk, and feminism.
Wednesday, January 18
Susan Tallman
Adjunct Associate Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism and Print Media, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Editor-in-Chief, Art in Print / artinprint.org
"There's No Such Thing as Very Unique"
Sponsored by the Print Media Department
Susan Tallman is an art historian, writer, and Editor-in-Chief of Art in Print. She has written extensively about prints, multiples, and issues of authenticity and reproduction. She has lived and worked in New York, Amsterdam, and Berlin, and currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Tuesday, January 24
John Corso
Assistant Professor, Oakland University
"Foucault on Art, Or, Why Artists and Archivists Make Good Friends"
Sponsored by the Critical Studies Program
John J. Corso is an Assistant Professor of the History of Contemporary Art and Critical Theory at Oakland University. He holds a doctoral degree from Cornell University and Master's degrees from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University. He is completing a manuscript entitled, "Art Unhung: The Rise of the Subject-String."
Thursday, January 26
This lecture begins at 7:00 pm
Nicole Cherubini
"An Evening with Nicole Cherubini"
Sponsored by the Ceramics Department and the Cranbrook Art Museum
Tuesday, January 31
Julia Bryan-Wilson
Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, UC Berkeley
"Crisis Craft"
Sponsored by the Critical Studies Program
Julia Bryan-Wilson is Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include questions of artistic labor, feminism, and queer theory. She has held grants from the Getty, the Clark Art Institute, the Center for Craft, Creativity and Design, among others. Her writings on artists such as Ida Applebroog, Sadie Benning, Harmony Hammond, Sharon Hayes, Cristóbal Lehyt, Anne Wilson, and Francesca Woodman have appeared in exhibition catalogs as well as in the Art Bulletin, Artforum, Art Journal, Art US, Bookforum, Camera Austria, Camera Obscura, October, the Journal of Modern Craft, and Oxford Art Journal. Her book Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era (University of California, 2009) was named an "outstanding academic title" by Choice magazine.
Tuesday, February 28
Corin Hewitt
Artist
"An Evening with Corin Hewitt"
Sponsored by the Sculpture Department
Corin Hewitt is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sculpture + Extended Media at VCU who has been a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011. Hewitt also recently received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. He is a sculptor whose work centers on setting up cultural questions in arranged spaces and then examining those questions in a variety of ways. Hewitt's work has appeared in such venues as the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, the Seattle Art Museum, the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Norway, the Wanas Foundation in Sweden and through the Public Art Fund in a public installation in Brooklyn.
Tuesday, March 6
Damon Murray
Co-Director, FUEL Design & Publishing
"One Definition of Design"
Sponsored by the 2D Design Department
Fuel design group was founded at the Royal College of Art in 1991 by Damon Murray and Stephen Sorrell. From the outset, Murray and Sorrell worked commercially for a range of clients in the areas of fashion, art and film. They combined these varied commissions with projects of their own, including a magazine also entitled Fuel. In 1996 and 2000 respectively they published Pure Fuel and Fuel 3000, two books that examined the accepted notions of graphic design, illustrating ideas and preoccupations to explore themes of authorship. They have received awards for both their commercial and experimental digital work in the fields of short films, idents, and TV commercials. They are known for producing books and catalogues, working closely with artists – in particular Tracey Emin and Jake and Dinos Chapman. In 2005 they formed an independent publishing company within the group, Fuel Publishing. The resulting beautiful and distinctive publications are achieved through a process of close collaboration with the authors. Many of their books, the Russian Criminal Tattoo series in particular, have received broad critical acclaim.
Tuesday, March 13
Sande Cohen
Professor Emeritus, CalArts
"French Theory and Critical Practices Today"
Sponsored by the Critical Studies Program
Sande Cohen received a PhD in intellectual history from UCLA. He taught at Brown (1976-79), UCLA (1979-87 and 2008-2009), and CalArts (1980-2009). He currently divides his time between the U.S. and mostly the Chiang-mai area of Thailand. He is the author of, among other works, Historical Culture (1986, UC Press); Academia and the Luster of Capital (1993, Minnesota); French Theory in America (co-ed, 2001, Routledge); and History Out of Joint (2006, Johns Hopkins). His most recent essays are in Cultural Critique (75, 2010) and Rethinking History (2011). His main area of interest is historiography—the intellectual coding(s) and other organizations of all things timed, including the untimely. This involves using close analysis of discursive behavior in the criticism of institutional practices.
Friday, March 30
Kenneth Goldsmith, aka Kenny G.
Author / Artist
"If We Had To Ask for Permission, We Wouldn't Exist: A Brief History of UbuWeb"
Co-sponsored by the Critical Studies program and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit
Kenneth Goldsmith's writing has been called "some of the most exhaustive and beautiful collage work yet produced in poetry" by Publishers Weekly. Goldsmith is the author of ten books of poetry, founding editor of the online archive UbuWeb, and the editor of "I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews," which was the basis for an opera, "Trans-Warhol," that premiered in Geneva in March of 2007. An hour-long documentary on his work, "Sucking on Words" was first shown at the British Library in 2007. He teaches writing at The University of Pennsylvania, where he is a senior editor of PennSound, an online poetry archive. He held the The Anschutz Distinguished Fellow Professorship in American Studies at Princeton University for 2009-10 and received the Qwartz Electronic Music Award in Paris in 2009. In 2011, he co-edited, "Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing" and published a book essays, "Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age." Goldsmith will participate in dOCUMENTA(13) in Kassel, Germany, 2012. In 2011, dOCUMENTA(13) published his "Letter To Bettina Funcke" as part of their "100 Notes - 100 Thoughts" book series.
Tuesday, April 10
Jeannie Greenberg
Sponsored by the Photography Department
Tuesday, April 24
The Knoll Lecture
3D Design Department presents
Tejo Remy, Designer
"The Work of Atelier Remy & Veenhuizen"
Designer Tejo Remy is currently a partner with Rene Veenhuizen in Atelier Remy & Veenhuizen. Tejo Remy was born in 1960 in the Netherlands. Having studied three-dimensional design from 1986-1991 at HKU (the Utrecht School of the Arts), Netherlands, Remy now works as an interior and product designer in Utrecht. He often collaborates with Droog Design, a company focused on designs for everyday objects using low-cost, industrial, or recycled materials. Tejo Remy has participated in numerous exhibitions at venues including Boulevard de Unica, Utrecht, Netherlands (2003); Pluk de D. Academie Galerie, Utrecht, Netherlands (2002); Villa Droog, Hyeres, France (2001); and Next Generation 2000, Japan (2000). His work can be found in many collections, including the Museum Boymans v. Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; and Centraal Museum, Utrecht, Netherlands.
Sponsored by Knoll Corporation
The Knoll Lecture Series at Cranbrook Academy of Art, established through a generous endowment by Knoll International, each year brings a renowned designer to the Academy for a free public lecture to promote the importance of design as well as learning sessions with Academy students.
Tuesday, May 1
Namita Wiggers
Curator, Museum of Contemporary Craft
"Performing Craft: The Exhibition as a Site for Theatrical Exchange"
Sponsored by the Fiber Department
Namita Gupta Wiggers is curator at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in partnership with Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, OR, where she directs the exhibition, collection and public programming. Her curatorial work combines her experience and training as an art historian, a museum educator, ethnographer and design researcher, teacher, writer, and studio art jeweller. Through exhibitions and programming, Wiggers considers how craft and design function as subjects and verbs, and as simultaneously distinct and intersecting practices, and how the exhibition operates as a site and space for cultural inquiry.
2011 [FALL] Edition Lecture Series
In its third season, the [FALL] Edition Lecture Series at Cranbrook Academy of Art reflects the current variety of contemporary creative practice with a series of evenings exploring all forms of innovative inquiry. Designed as part of the academic program at Cranbrook Academy of Art, the lectures are open to the public--inviting the community to share in the ideas and discussions of the Academy.
All lectures begin at 6:00 pm in Cranbrook Institute of Science Auditorium and are free, unless otherwise noted. Parking is available in the structure to the west of the entrance. For directions to the Auditorium, visit here.
During the second week of the Fall semester, each Artist-in-Residence will give a presentation of their work with a focus on the subject of Interdisciplinary Practice.
September 19, 2011, 4pm
Scott Klinker, Beverly Fishman, Anders Ruhwald
Faculty Lectures, “Interdisciplinary Practice”
September 20, 2011, 4pm
Iris Eichenberg, Heather McGill, Randy Bolton, Elliott Earls
Faculty Lectures, “Interdisciplinary Practice”
September 21, 2011, 4pm
Bill Massie, Liz Cohen, Mark Newport
Faculty Lectures, “Interdisciplinary Practice”
Saturday, September 24, 2011
This lecture begins at 4:00 pm
Richard Deacon
Artist
“An Afternoon with Richard Deacon”
Sponsored by the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation for Art
Born in Bangor, Caernarvonshire, Wales in 1949, Richard Deacon lives and works in London, dividing his time between Paris, London and Cologne. Known for an imaginative and sometimes unexpected use of materials, Deacon has been surprising the art world with sculptures of supreme beauty and controlled structure for many years. He was awarded the Tate Gallery's Turner Prize in 1987. "The Size of It," a major traveling exhibition of large-scale work from the last ten years, opened at the Museo Artium in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, in June 2005; it travels to the Sara Hilden Art Museum in Tampere, Finland and to the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck in Remagen, Germany. Deacon has had solo exhibitions at the Serpentine, Whitechapel and Tate Galleries in London, and was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at the Tate Gallery Liverpool in 1990. In 2007 he represented Wales this year at the Venice Biennale.
October 3, 2011
This lecture begins at noon
Leonardo Drew
Artist
“An Afternoon with Leonardo Drew”
Sponsored by the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation for Art
Leonardo Drew is a contemporary artist who lives in San Antonio, Texas and Brooklyn, New York. His installations, sculptures and mixed-media work has been shown at the Mary Boone Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Texas, the Hirschhorn Museum, the Fabric Workshop, the Palazzo Delle Papesse in Siena, Italy and the Sikkema Jenkins Gallery, where he is represented. Born in Florida, Drew then studied at the Parsons School of Design and the the Cooper Union in New York.
October 4, 2011
Jana Cephas
Cranbrook 2011 Critical Studies Fellow
“Performative Aesthetics”
Part of the fellowship series, “Bodies of Knowledge: Corporeal Landscapes and Aesthetic Practices”
Sponsored by the Critical Studies Program
Jana Cephas is currently a PhD candidate in History and Theory of Architecture, Landscape and Urbanism at Harvard University, with secondary studies in the field of Science, Technology and Society Studies. She will complete her dissertation and earn her degree in 2012. Before entering Harvard, Ms. Cephas pursued her education in architecture and urbanism at the University of Michigan and the University of Detroit Mercy, where she is held in high esteem as a gifted original thinker and as a teacher. She has served as an instructor and guest critic in architectural design and in the history and theory of architecture and urbanism at Harvard University, Northeastern University, and Rhode Island School of Design. Her dissertation work is focused on the urbanization of Detroit in the early twentieth-century through examining the metaphors associated with working (class) bodies, modern buildings, and efficient machines.
October 11, 2011
FILM : !Women Art Revolution
Directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson
An entertaining and revelatory “secret history” of Feminist Art, !Women Art Revolution deftly illuminates this under-explored movement throughconversations, observations, archival footage and works of visionary artists,historians, curators and critics. Starting from its roots in 1960s antiwar andcivil rights protests, the film details major developments in women’s artthrough the 1970s and explores how the tenacity and courage of thesepioneering artists resulted in what is now widely regarded as the mostsignificant art movement of the late 20th century.
October 18, 2011
Helen Molesworth
Chief Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston
“Dance/Draw”
Sponsored by the Critical Studies Program
Helen Molesworth is the Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Boston. While head of the Department of Modern and Contemporary art and the Houghton Curator of Contemporary Art at the Harvard Art Museum, she presented an exhibition of photographs by Moyra Davey and ACT UP NY: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis 1987-1993. From 2002 to 2007 she was the Chief Curator of Exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts where she organized the first US retrospectives ofLouise Lawler and Luc Tuymans, as well as Part Object Part Sculpture which examined sculpture in the wake of Marcel Duchamp’s erotic objects and handmade readymades of the 1960s. From 2000-2002 she was the Curator of Contemporary Art at The Baltimore Museum of Art, where she organized Work Ethic, which traced the problem of artistic labor in post-1960s art. She is the author of numerous articles and her writing has appeared in publications such as Artforum, Art Journal, Documents, and October. Her research areas are concentrated largely within and around the problems of feminism, the reception of Marcel Duchamp, and the socio-historical frameworks of contemporary art. She is currently at work on two major exhibitions: Dance/Draw opens at the ICA this coming October and This Will Have Been: Art, Love, and Politics in the 1980s premieres at the MCA Chicago in the winter of 2012.
October 23, 2011
This lecture begins at 5:00 pm
Dr. Patricia MacCormack
Reader, English, Communication, Film and Media at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge
“Inhuman Ecstasies: Feminism, Art and Angelic Monsters”
Sponsored by the Metalsmithing department
Dr. Patricia MacCormack is Reader in English, Communication, Film and Media at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. She has published extensively on Guattari, Blanchot, Serres, Irigaray, feminism, queer theory, teratology, body modification, posthuman theory, animal rights and horror film. Her work includes ‘Inhuman Ecstasy’ (Angelaki), ‘Becoming-Vulva.’ (New Formations) ‘The Great Ephemeral Tattooed Skin.’ (Body and Society) ‘Necrosexuality’ (Queering the Non/Human) ‘Unnatural Alliances’ (Deleuze and Queer Theory) ‘Vitalistic FeminEthics’ (Deleuze and Law) and ‘Cinemasochism: Time, Space and Submission.’ (The Afterimage of Gilles Deleuze’s Film Philosophy). She has been involved in a number of feminist art projects. She is the author of Cinesexuality and the co-editor of The Schizoanalysis of Cinema. She is currently writing on post-human ethics.
October 25, 2011
Damian Skinner
Art Historian and Curator. Editor, Art Jewelry Forum
“The Violet Discourse: Art History Versus Art and Craft Objects”
Sponsored by the Metalsmithing department
Dr. Damian Skinner is an independent art historian and curator, based in New Zealand. In this lecture, he talks about the problem and potential of art history’s encounter with the art and craft object. Ranging from the indigenous Maori art of New Zealong to contemporary craft, Skinner’s talk explores various brutal and beautiful encounters between art history and its subjects. Skinner received his PhD in art history from Victoria University of Wellington in 2006, for a thesis exploring the dynamic relationship between customary or traditional and modern Maori art in the twentieth century. This was later published as The Carver and the Artist: Maori Art in the Twentieth Century. He has published a number of books about Maori art, the indigenous art of New Zealand, including Ihenga: The Evolution of Maori Art in the Twentieth Century and The Passing World, The Passage of Life: John Hovell and the Art of Kowhaiwhai. He is currently working on a project about art and decolonization, which explores the particular role that indigenous and settler artworks have played as part of anti-colonial struggles in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Skinner has also written widely about contemporary jewelry in New Zealand. His books include Given: Jewellery by Warwick Freeman and Alan Preston: Between Tides. He is the Editor for Art Jewelry Forum, an American organization that supports and promotes contemporary jewelry internationally, and he is currently editing a book called Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective, which will be published by Lark Books in 2013.
November 1, 2011
Paul Sahre
Graphic Designer
“84th Infantry Monument"
Sponsored by the 2D Design department
Graphic designer, illustrator, lecturer, educator and author Paul Sahre established his New York studio in 1997. While consciously maintaining a small office, Sahre has nevertheless built a large presence in American graphic design. The balance he strikes between commercial and personal projects is evident in the physical layout of his workspace: part design studio, part silkscreen lab, part classroom. In one room he designs and prints posters (some of which are in the permanent collection at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum) for various off-off Broadway theaters, while in the other room he is busy designing book covers for authors such as Rick Moody, Chuck Klosterman, Ben Marcus and Ernest Hemingway. Sahre is also a frequent visual contributor to The New York Times. He is the author of Leisurama Now: The Beach House for Everyone, 1964-_______, a loving look at a short-lived product of early ‘60s consumer optimism: affordable middle-class summer homes. Sahre received his BFA and MFA from Kent State and teaches graphic design at the School of Visual Arts. He lectures extensively all over the world. He is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale.
November 3, 2011
Dr. Kathy Battista
Director of Contemporary Art, Sotheby's Institute of Art
“Renegotiating the Body: Feminist Artists in 1970s London”
Sponsored by the Painting department
Kathy Battista is Director of Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York. She is author of the forthcoming Re-negotiating the Body: Feminist Artists in 1970s London and New York New Wave. She is also co-author of Art New York and Recent Architecture in The Netherlands. Her essays have appeared in many edited collections, including Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender; Arcade: Artists and Placemaking; Surface Tension: Supplement 1 and Surface Tension: Problematics of Site; as well as many exhibition catalogues. Kathy is a regular contributor to the journals Art Monthly, Art Untitled, and RES Art World, and is on the editorial board of Art & Architecture Journal. She has taught at Birkbeck College and The London Consortium, University of London; Kings College; the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University; Cornell University; and Tate Modern. She co-founded the curatorial agency Tauromakia, is on the Curatorial Committee of NJ MoCA, and was founder of the Interaction program for the UK-based public art agency Artangel. She received her PhD and was a Postdoctoral Fellow of The London Consortium, University of London and her MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art.
November 8, 2011
Jana Cephas
Cranbrook 2011 Critical Studies Fellow
“Body Politics”
Part of the fellowship series, “Bodies of Knowledge: Corporeal Landscapes and Aesthetic Practices”
Sponsored by the Critical Studies Program
Jana Cephas is currently a PhD candidate in History and Theory of Architecture, Landscape and Urbanism at Harvard University, with secondary studies in the field of Science, Technology and Society Studies. She will complete her dissertation and earn her degree in 2012. Before entering Harvard, Ms. Cephas pursued her education in architecture and urbanism at the University of Michigan and the University of Detroit Mercy, where she is held in high esteem as a gifted original thinker and as a teacher. She has served as an instructor and guest critic in architectural design and in the history and theory of architecture and urbanism at Harvard University, Northeastern University, and Rhode Island School of Design. Her dissertation work is focused on the urbanization of Detroit in the early twentieth-century through examining the metaphors associated with working (class) bodies, modern buildings, and efficient machines.
December 6, 2011
Sue Taylor
Professor of Art History at Portland State University
“Eva Hesse against the Grain”
Sponsored by the Critical Studies Program
Sue Taylor earned her B.A. in art history at Roosevelt University and her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. Before joining the faculty at Portland State University, she had been a museum curator and newspaper critic as well as a professor of art history. Devoted to the study of modern and contemporary art from feminist and psychoanalytic perspectives, she has written articles and exhibition and book reviews for American Art, American Craft, Art Journal, Art News, ArtUS, the Chicago Sun-Times, Dialogue, Fiberarts, the New Art Examiner, and Oregonian. She is a corresponding editor for Art in America. Professor Taylor’s book on German-born Surrealist Hans Bellmer, The Anatomy of Anxiety (MIT Press), appeared in 2000. Scholarly essays on Jackson Pollock and Grant Wood followed, her essay "Grant Wood's Family Album" winning the Smithsonian’s Patricia and Philip Frost Prize for 2005. She is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the American Association of University Women, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center, American Psychoanalytic Association, and the Society for the Preservation of American Modernists.
