Cranbrook Grad Shows @ Knight Arts blog
Spring has come, and with it, a fresh crop of hopeful art school graduates prepare to take on the world. But first, the final hurdle—graduate shows. There’s still one week to catch the graduate show at Cranbrook Art Museum, which features the work of more than 80 graduates across 10 departments.
Cranbrook, the recipient of multiple Knight Arts grants, is making efforts to bring groundbreaking work to metro Detroit. Aiming to encourage dialogue between the historically divided suburban and inner-city communities, it is a fitting venue for presenting the art academy’s most recent cohort of graduates, who are about to leave the nest and take up their own efforts to engage in the wider conversation between art and society.
The show’s opening was a riot of activity, with works and participants too numerous to mention—in a survey of so many artists, it is challenging to focus on individual works. Patrick McGuan dealt with vulnerability in a photograph series that featured the artist exposing his stomach amid industrial landscapes. Benjamin Santiago turned in a high-energy multimedia performance piece during the opening. Every gallery was brimming with colors, methods and materials.