Abstract In 1927 George G. Booth established the Cranbrook Academy of Art as an educational environment where students could come and learn from master artists in residence. The Academy functioned as a department under the Cranbrook Foundation and included painting, architecture, sculpture, ceramics and decorative design. The first Academy students were taken in early 1930. Eliel Saarinen was the first President (1932-1946). In 1942, with the opening of the Museum and Library, the Academy became an...

Abstract Steele attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he studied painting with Zoltan Sepeshy, starting in the fall of 1940. In 1942, he received his first award as a mural artist as part of the Cranbrook team in the Rome Collaborative competition. Not long after, he left Cranbrook to join the war effort and was selected by the War Department Advisory Committee to be a “soldier artist” and document his experience. Steele traveled to Australia and the South Pacific, filling books with sketches...

Abstract Wallace McMahon Mitchell was born on October 9, 1911 in Detroit, Michigan to Arthur Z. and Edith McMahon Mitchell. He was a respected painter, textile designer, geometric abstractionist, and a Cranbrook Academy of Art (CAA) graduate student (’35). He later served at the Academy as a painting, and arts and crafts instructor; registrar; director; and then president until his death in 1977. The collection contains the papers of Mitchell and his family during his years at Cranbrook. Included are...