Greetings Cranbrook Friends and Happy New Year!
All of us at Cranbrook hope that each of you had an enjoyable and relaxing holiday season. After the flurry of activity in the first half of the academic year, we certainly all deserved some needed rest!
It's an exciting time for Cranbrook and we are grateful to each one of our supporters and friends who help make our collective work possible. Across Cranbrook, we think of ourselves as in the people business and we make that a core part of our mission - to provide extraordinary education, to encourage creativity and innovation, and to develop people who will live with purpose and integrity. My personal thanks to each of you for your ongoing support of this great institution.
At Cranbrook Schools, January means it is time for the Winter Open House. These twice-annual events offer opportunities for Cranbrook to connect with families and students interested in discovering how and why a Cranbrook education opens doors to success like few other institutions.
I hope each of you will encourage families who may be interested in Cranbrook to 
join us on January 11 from 1 to 3 p.m. The event is open to all families with children considering pre-kindergarten through high school, and offers the chance to meet Cranbrook's faculty, get an up-close look at our facilities, and speak with members of our admission teams. As a proud parent of a Cranbrook alum, I know that to experience Cranbrook is to experience excellence; and a visit to our campus is the first step. If I can be of help through a call or personal invitation to visit, please let me know.
Our Community saw many changes this past year, from a new Director at the Academy of Art to a soon-to-be-completed new exit and parking lot at Cranbrook House. Plus, our museums hosted exhibitions that impressed like never before, and our outreach programs touched more learners than ever. I suspect the Booths would be proud of all that our Community accomplished, which was made possible through your help.
At our museums, Warhol on Vinyl opened to national acclaim at the Art Museum, and with the Institute of Science's Midwest debut of Women of Vision: National Geographic's Photographers on Assignment, two landmark exhibitions were brought to our campus. Both of these shows drew new audiences and helped raise the profile of Cranbrook as a whole, one of my goals as President. I have little doubt that our momentum will continue into 2015 in new and exciting ways.
At the Academy of Art, a new website is up and running. Information about our programs, as well as the world-class work of our students, graduates, and Artists-in-Residence, is easier to find and more in depth than ever before. I encourage you to take time to explore this exceptional new digital resource as it is very impressive.
Additionally, Cranbrook Art Museum recently opened a series of three new 
exhibitions with something for everyone. These new installations include The Cranbrook Hall of Wonders: Artworks, Objects, and Natural Curiosities, which leverages the power of collaboration among Cranbrook's program areas by incorporating the collections of not only the Art Museum, but also the Institute of Science and Cultural Properties into exhibit experiences that are uniquely Cranbrook. I hope you will visit and experience collections that only a Community like ours can offer.
Also at Cranbrook Art Museum, Theater of the Mind is an exhibition/experience in the truest Cranbrook tradition of the unique and unexpected. In addition, Iris Eichenberg: Bend, a solo exhibition by contemporary jewelry artist, Artist-in-Residence and Head of the Metalsmithing Department, Iris Eichenberg, provides an unconventional retrospective of her twenty-five year career presented through a body of new work. I believe Iris's work is second to none and you will soon see why Cranbrook's graduate Metalsmithing program has few peers. If you have not yet seen these exhibitions, I would like to suggest that you visit the Art Museum on January 16, 17, or 18 during the Warhol Winterfest Weekend. Friday night, which will be free for everyone, includes a live band while families are the focus of Saturday and Sunday with Warhol-inspired ice sculpture carving and LEGO� brick portrait projects.
On the horizon at the Art Museum is not only the annual Graduate Degree Exhibit
ion in April, but also an exhibition of the work of one of the Academy's most celebrated living artists, Nick Cave. This project, which opens to members on June 19, includes not only the exhibition Here Hear in the Art Museum but also a series of performances, dance labs, and parades that will take place throughout the City of Detroit. Collectively,
Cave is calling this his "biggest, baddest series of performances of all time."
Cranbrook's Center for Collections and Research continues to build audiences through its offerings of special lectures and "days away." If you were unable to join the visit to the Frank Lloyd Wright house in Okemos and the Broad Museum in East Lansing or one of the Center's lectures last fall, watch for the winter series that will feature our newly restored Steinway Piano with a series of lectures and concerts hosted in partnership with Cranbrook House and Gardens and a lecture by the internationally acclaimed French landscape architect Louis Benech. A lecture on architect Albert Kahn, followed by the "Albert Kahn in Detroit" Day Away bus trip on May 16, will be perfect outings celebrating the spring season. Make plans to join us and be sure to purchase your tickets early as all of these special programs are certain to sell out.
The Institute of Science launches a new program this month designed to garner 
audiences thirsty for knowledge and new experiences with Science After Dark @ Cranbrook, a series for adults that will combine food, drink, on-floor demonstrations and informal science talks. Plus, in February, the Institute opens the door to the universe through a new astronomy exhibition, followed in the fall by a biodiversity-based live animal experience that keys into current issues of our day surrounding wildlife and conservation.
The Institute's popular lecture series in partnership with The Nature Conservancy also returns this winter with a series of new, thought-provoking talks by Nature Conservancy scientists.
At Cranbrook House, the new, expanded parking lot and exit drive will be completed in spring of 2015. By now, many of you have already used the parking lot at t
he House and I hope you've noticed the space for exit gates. In case you were not aware, our plan is to restore and install at the exit the gates that were once the original gates to the Cranbrook estate north of Kingswood on Cranbrook Road. This "new exit" will not only pay tribute to the past, but will make the traffic flow and parking at Cranbrook House safer and more efficient. I hope you share my enthusiasm for this long overdue improvement. Work also will continue on the roof at Cranbrook House throughout 2015, in what we know will help preserve this special treasure for the next century.
Also at Cranbrook House, the final Holiday Tables fundraiser took place this past November after 39 years of beautiful tables, visits by Cranbrook friends, and an extraordinary holiday tradition. Rest assured, though, that new and unique holiday events are in the works, all in support of the House and Gardens Auxiliary, one of Cranbrook's most important organizations.
All of these exciting activities remind me of a quote from George Booth from 1918, "The enduring proofs of achievement are the standards of beauty we set up for ourselves in thought, word, and deed and the tangible evidences of our devotion to these ideals by the creation of surroundings consistent with such ideals." Our founders George and Ellen Scripps Booth laid a foundation for Cranbrook; built on excellence and beauty, and it endures today as we begin another new and exciting year at Cranbrook.
I look forward to sharing a memorable 2015 at Cranbrook with you and your family. As always, I am interested in your thoughts and ideas. I encourage you to contact me directly if I may be of help or if you have ideas to make Cranbrook even better.
My Very Best Wishes for the New Year,
Dominic A. DiMarco, President
Cranbrook Educational Community
248.645.3100
[email protected]
