Cranbrook Academy of Art, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, is the only school in the United States devoted to graduate study in art, architecture, and design. Detroit newspaper publisher George Booth; his wife, Ellen; and Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen worked together to establish the academy in 1932. Saarinen served as the academy’s first president and resident architect. The school began to grant degrees in 1942.
The Cranbrook Educational Community is also home to art and science museums and to the Cranbrook Schools, which teach students from preschool through high school. The Cranbrook Academy complex is named for the birthplace of Booth’s father in England. The Cranbrook campus is a national historic landmark and includes formal gardens, lakes and waterways, and a collection of outdoor sculptures, many by Swedish sculptor Carl Milles.
The art museum includes the permanent Cranbrook Collection and changing exhibitions of contemporary art. Sculptor Harry Bertoia, furniture designers Charles Eames and Florence Knoll, and architect Eero Saarinen—Eliel Saarinen’s son—all taught at the Cranbrook Academy of Art.
The university’s website at https://cranbrookart.edu/ offers additional information.
