Explore the oeuvre of one of the 20th century's most productive, unconventional masters of architecture – Eero Saarinen – during
Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, now through March 30 at Cranbrook Art Museum.
Beginning its three-year national tour at Cranbrook – a National Historic Landmark designed by the architect's father, Eliel Saarinen – the exhibit features work by Eero Saarinen completed at Cranbrook as well as an extensive collection of furniture, photographs, films, drawings and models representing his entire career. During that illustrious career, he produced a series of masterpieces characterized by breathtaking individuality including the General Motors Tech Center in Warren, Mich.; the 630-foot-tall, stainless steel St. Louis Gateway Arch along the Mississippi River, commemorating America's westward expansion; and the TWA Terminal at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport, where swooping concrete vaults thrilled travelers with what was then the new glamour of worldwide flight.
Saarinen arrived at Cranbrook with his family in 1925 at the age of 15, and almost immediately the institution profoundly shaped his life and work. Between 1928 and 1931, he was offered opportunities to create decorative pieces for many Cranbrook buildings including furniture for Saarinen House, the family home, as well as chairs, tables, sofas, beds and lamps for Cranbrook's Kingswood School for Girls. While at Cranbrook, Saarinen eventually came to know and work with legendary designers and artists Florence Knoll Bassett, Charles and Ray Eames, Harry Bertoia, Ralph Rapson and many other faculty and students who heralded a golden epoch in Cranbrook Academy of Art's history. In his later career, Saarinen nurtured some of the best young architectural talents from around the world, many of whom went on to have significant practices of their own including Cesar Pelli and Robert Venturi.
Deploying progressive construction techniques and a highly personal, exuberant and often metaphorical aesthetic, Saarinen's work defied modernist orthodoxies and gave iconic form to the postwar American ideal of an open-ended society of unbounded choice and diversity – an ideal that persists to this day. In his search for a richer and more varied modern architecture, Saarinen became one of the most prolific and controversial practitioners of his time, and one of the most influential.
Cranbrook worked closely with the exhibition's organizers, contributing many items from Cranbrook Art Museum and Cranbrook Archives for display, and helping scholars compile materials for the accompanying exhibition catalog. Cranbrook's Eero Saarinen materials are among the most significant in the world.
General admission for the exhibition is $10 for adults and seniors; $5 for teens and full-time students with ID; children 12 and under are free with adult admission. For more information, please call 248 645.3312 or click
here.
Additional links:
www.eerosaarinen.net
