Postwar Panoply (The Architect's Newspaper)
https://www.archpaper.com/2025/09/exhibition-cranbrook-museum-art-midcentury-modernism/
Eventually Everything Connects: Mid-Century Modern Design in the U.S.
Cranbrook Art Museum
Detroit
June 14, 2025–September 21, 2025
With its iconic objects and household names, midcentury modernism was a movement helmed by design giants whose influence continues to shape the field nearly a century later. Eventually Everything Connects: Mid-Century Modern Design in the U.S., on view at Cranbrook Art Museum, returns to the birthplace of midcentury modern design, spotlighting the designers and histories that formed the movement. The show was a highlight of Detroit Month of Design, which celebrated its 15th anniversary this September.
It was at Cranbrook’s Eliel Saarinen–designed campus that Ray and Charles Eames fell in love, Florence Knoll and Eero Saarinen first began the lifelong friendship that would lead to their professional collaboration, and Harry Bertoia taught jewelry design and metalwork. However, curators Andrew Satake Blauvelt, director of the Cranbrook Art Museum and Bridget Bartal, the MillerKnoll Curatorial Fellow, with the assistance of Katherine White, design curator of the Henry Ford Museum, chose instead to center the work of designers who have often been pushed to the margins.
“This new exhibition begins with Cranbrook-affiliated designers and then expands outward to include those who have historically been overlooked or forgotten in design history,” Lyla Catellier, the curator of public programs, explained to AN during a walk-through, “There’s never been a design survey like this one at Cranbrook, or at any other institution that we’re aware of.”
Blauvelt’s commitment to showing works by artists of color, women, and LGBTQIA+ individuals led to the museum’s acquisition of 50 works to round out the exhibition of more than 200 objects. The exhibition prompts viewers to consider designers like Charles Harrison, the Black industrial designer behind the ubiquitous plastic trash can, the View-Master, and over 750 other products for Sears. Or Edward J. Wormley, an openly gay furniture designer whose 40 years of practice gave weight to his redefinition of an oft-maligned term: “Modernism means freedom—freedom to mix, to choose, to change, to embrace the new but to hold fast to what is good.”
Rather than rely on familiar names or attempt a neat chronology, the more than 200 objects on display in the sprawling exhibition are organized according to the concerns of Americans and American designers in the aftermath of World War II. The curators argue that the design of the times rose out of overlapping reactions to postwar survival as Americans demanded a renewed sense of “modern living,” one that called for the reimagining of everything from airport seating to haute couture and garbage cans—hence the exhibition’s title, which draws from a quote attributed to Charles Eames. “When people are connected and collaborating, different ideas and practices can exist together in a meaningful constellation,” said Amy Auscherman, the director of global archives and brand heritage at MillerKnoll, a sponsor of the exhibition.
Shifting Perspectives
One vignette near the exhibition’s entrance, “Humanizing Modernism,” assembles work that rejected the self-seriousness that had characterized the interwar period in favor of a lighter, more humorous design language. Yes, two pieces designed by Charles and Ray Eames are present: a child’s chair with a heart carved into the back (1945) and a fiberglass armchair (1950) onto which illustrator Saul Steinberg painted a confident nude. But so is Tulip Chair with Painted Portrait (1959), a groovy accent piece designed and hand-painted by Estelle and Erwine Laverne, a lesser-known design couple of the time. In a Tik-Tok friendly video accompanying the segment, Bartal points out the couple’s philosophy in a 1948 advertisement of their services: “Let there be loveliness: charm belongs in today’s interiors.”
Another section titled “Preserving the Hand: The Designer-Craftsman,” severs the long-standing association between modernism and efficiency by showcasing pieces too precious for mass-production. It’s the perfect setting for a Conoid Cushion Chair, designed in 1959 and handmade in 1972 by George Nakashima. Humble yet dignified, Nakashima’s signature minimalism and respect for natural materials can be attributed to his role in crafting the housing at the Japanese internment camp in which he was incarcerated during the war. Nearby is a wall of lively, geometric textiles by Ruth Adler Schnee, a Holocaust survivor who fled Europe and settled in Detroit, where she attended Cranbrook. Soon after, she launched a successful textile business, becoming the only woman to have a shop within the prestigious Hudson’s department store.
Where We Work
A major part of the exhibition is devoted to midcentury design’s reshaping of work through workplace design. On display are the products of Robert Propst, who served as the head of the research arm of Herman Miller and created a facility in Ann Arbor to research how people worked, especially in offices. This research led to the first version of Herman Miller’s Action Office, whose open, flexible workspace system served as a prototype for what we now know as the cubicle. “It was beautiful,” said Auscherman, “but it flopped commercially because it was too expensive.” By contrast, Propst’s second iteration, Action Office 2, was flexible, scalable, and affordable. “And while Propst later deeply regretted that his design turned into a sea of depressing beige boxes,” Auscherman added, “it remains the foundation of contemporary office design.”
The legacy of Florence Knoll appropriately looms over much of the exhibition, whose core philosophy could have been its alternate title: “Good design is good business.” Catellier points out a tiny paper cutout of a dress made by Knoll’s assistant to show her a Christmas outfit. “Florence took inspiration from that and created a literal design palette: floorplans that included wood samples, stone, textiles, everything down to where the plant and art would go,” said Catellier. “This wasn’t just decoration; it was the invention of interior design as a discipline. She essentially created the process we now use to plan interiors.”
A UNESCO City of Design
Everything Eventually Connects: Mid-Century Modern Design in the US takes Cranbrook and the Detroit area as a departure point, tracing midcentury design’s evolution beyond the biggest names in the business. By shining a light on the cavalcade of people that didn’t fit into the simple narratives commonly ascribed to the era, the exhibition expands the understanding of what made midcentury design a movement. “Cranbrook isn’t just a school—it’s a microcosm of design, culture, tension, invention, and contradiction,” said Kevin Adkisson, a curator at the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research, as he gave a tour of the school’s historic facilities. “And today, if you sit in any American car from 1950 to 1970, you’re probably sitting on a Cranbrook textile.”
Detroit’s automotive legacy continued to shine at this year’s Detroit Month of Design in Warren, Michigan, where the legendary GM Technical Center was recently renovated. Designed by Eero and Eliel Saarinen between 1953–1955, the factory campus is given character with art and design from a who’s who of midcentury talent in and around Detroit, including Marianne Strengell, Florence Knoll, Harry Bertoia, Maija Grotell, and Gere Kavanaugh, something the exhibition highlights through a selection of images and drawings. The center continues its design innovation with its latest renovation which features Cadillac House, a shimmering customer center for the Cadillac Celestiq, an all-electric super saloon that is only built to special order. Here, and at Cranbrook, and so many sites in between, it is clear that the creative legacy of Detroit lives on unabated.
