Ruth Adler Schnee is an internationally recognized textile designer. Influenced at an early age by the artist Paul Klee, she later took courses with Walter Gropius, studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and Cranbrook Academy of Art, and worked with industrial designer Raymond Loewy. An innovator in textile design, she worked with architects Eero Saarinen and Minoru Yamasaki. From 1947 to 1960, she and her husband Edward Schnee operated Adler-Schnee, a design studio and shop, one of the first to bring Modern home furnishings to Detroit. Adler Schnee has received numerous awards throughout her career and her work appears in major museums. Her textile designs are still being produced.
Donald Albrecht is curator of architecture and design at the Museum of the City of New York and an independent curator. He has organized exhibitions that have ranged from overviews of cultural trends—including New Directions in Sustainable Architecture and Design for the National Building Museum, the National Design Triennial for the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and Paris/New York: Design Fashion Culture, 1925–1940 for the Museum of the City of New York—to profiles of individual design firms and artists— The Work of Charles and Ray Eames for the Library of Congress and Vitra Design Museum, Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future for the Finnish Cultural Institute and the Museum of Finnish Architecture, and Norman Bel Geddes: I Have Seen the Future for the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas and the Museum of the City of New York. Mr. Albrecht is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome.
Amy L. Arnold is the preservation planner for the Michigan State Historic Preservation Office. She earned her bachelor’s degree in history from Western Michigan University and studied at Duke University before returning to Michigan to obtain her master’s degree in historic preservation from Eastern Michigan University. She has served as the project manager for the Michigan Modern project since its inception in 2008.
Emily Bills received her PhD in the history of architecture and urban planning from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. She holds dual positions as coordinator of the Urban Studies Program in the College of Transdisciplinarity and managing director of the Julius Shulman Institute in the School of Architecture at Woodbury University. Her work on telephone infrastructure and the development of Los Angeles received a Graham Foundation Carter Manny Award Citation of Special Recognition. She’s also received fellowship and grant support from the Smithsonian, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Huntington Library, and the Society of Architectural Historians. Recent curatorial projects include Pedro E. Guerrero: Photographs of Modern Life, Catherine Opie: In & Around L.A., and Richard Barnes: Unnatural Spaces. She writes on the history of photography, urban infrastructure, and Modern architecture.
Gunnar Birkerts received his architecture degree in Stuttgart, Germany, before immigrating to the United States, where he worked in the offices of Eero Saarinen and Minoru Yamasaki prior to starting his own firm. He was a faculty member of the University of Michigan College of Architecture from 1960 to 1990. Birkerts is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, the Latvian Architectural Association, and the Graham Foundation. He has received more than fifty-eight major architectural awards over the course of his career.
Christian G. Carron has directed the collections of the world’s largest children’s museum in Indianapolis since 2012. He spent the previous twenty-four years as historian and director of collections for the Grand Rapids Public Museum. While there he curated the creation of The Furniture City, an exhibition about the region’s furniture industry, drawn from the museum’s own furniture collection, one of the largest in the nation. He is the author of Grand Rapids Furniture: The Story of America’s Furniture City (Grand Rapids Public Museum, 1998), the primary resource on the topic, and is a frequent speaker about Grand Rapids furniture and the Midwestern Arts and Crafts movement. Before coming to Michigan, Carron worked with decorative arts and historical collections at the Kentucky Museum, the Louisiana State Museum, and the Missouri Historical Society. He holds a BA in history, art, and museum studies from Luther College and an MA in historical administration from Eastern Illinois University.
Brian Carter, a registered architect, is a graduate of the University of Nottingham School of Architecture and the University of Toronto. He worked in practice in London and has designed award-winning buildings in Europe and North America. After serving as chair of the Architecture Department at the University of Michigan from 1994 until 2001, he was appointed dean of the School of Architecture & Planning at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he is currently professor of architecture. He is the author of Johnson Wax Administration Building and Research Tower—Frank Lloyd Wright (Phaidon, 1998), the editor of several books on design, and a contributor to The Architectural Review, Architectural Design, Detail, and Casabella. He has curated exhibitions on the work of Peter Rice, Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames, and Albert Kahn.
John Comazzi is an associate professor of architecture at the University of Minnesota, where he is currently the director of the bachelor of science degree program. He holds a master of architecture and a master of science in architecture history and theory from the University of Michigan, and a bachelor of science in architecture from the University of Virginia. From 1999 to 2006 he was a lecturer in architecture at the University of Michigan, before joining the architecture faculty at the University of Minnesota in 2006. He is the author of Balthazar Korab: Architect of Photography (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012), an illustrated biography on the life and career of Balthazar Korab, one of the most prolific and celebrated photographers of architecture practicing during the second half of the twentieth century. Professor Comazzi is currently working on a manuscript for a monograph on the Miller House and Garden in Columbus, Indiana.
Brian D. Conway was appointed Michigan’s state historic preservation officer in 1997. Trained as an architect, he has been involved with historic preservation and the rehabilitation of historic buildings throughout the state since 1980. Conway holds a bachelor of science degree from the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and a master of architecture degree from the University of Florida. He served on the board of the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers and is an adjunct professor in Eastern Michigan University’s graduate program in historic preservation.
Emily T. Cooperman is a historic preservation consultant and independent scholar. Prior to joining Preservation Design Partnership, Cooperman founded ARCH Preservation Consulting. She formerly served as the director of historic preservation for the Cultural Resource Consulting Group, and as the director of research for the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania. There she was scholarly director for the Philadelphia Architects and Buildings Project, authoring biographies for multiple twentieth-century designers with local, national, and international careers. She began her career in museum work. Cooperman has taught courses in art history, architectural history, and landscape history and historic preservation at Philadelphia University, the University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College, and the Barnes Foundation. Her project work has included National Historic Landmark nominations for works by Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, and Louis I. Kahn.
Leslie S. Edwards is a historian, researcher, lecturer, and the head archivist at the Cranbrook Archives. Her particular interests are in examining the social networks between artist/designers and architects, and ferreting out the untold stories of the women artists at Cranbrook. She is the author of numerous essays, including several in Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future (Yale University Press, 2006) and Cranbrook Art Museum: 100 Treasures (Cranbrook Art Museum, 2004). Her current project focuses on Finnish textile designer Marianne Strengell, including her work in industry and with architects (Edward Durell Stone, Russel Wright, and Marcel Breuer, among others) from 1940 to 1960; specifically Modernist projects, including the all-fiberglass building for Owens-Corning Fiberglas; and her automotive textiles for Ford and Chrysler. Edwards has worked closely with curators Monica Ponce de Leon and Gregory J. Saldaña of MPdL Studio on archival resources for the exhibition Michigan Modern: Design That Shaped America.
Gabrielle Esperdy, associate professor of architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, is an architectural historian and critic whose work examines the intersection of architecture, consumerism, and Modernism in the urban and suburban landscape of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She is particularly interested in minor or everyday buildings and the ways that social, economic, and political issues shape the built environment. Her first book, Modernizing Main Street (University of Chicago Press, 2008), studied efforts to use Modernist architecture to transform shopping districts and commercial strips as an antidote to the Great Depression. Her current book project, Architecture & Autopia, examines how architectural discourse absorbed the ideals and concerns of the commercial sphere after World War II. Esperdy is editor of the online encyclopedia SAH Archipedia and a frequent contributor to Places and Design Observer . She blogs on American Road Trip (www.esperdy.net).
Anthony Fontenot is an assistant professor at Woodbury University School of Architecture in Los Angeles. He holds a bachelor of architecture degree from the University of Louisiana, a master of architecture degree from the Southern California Institute of Architecture, and a PhD in the history and theory of architecture from Princeton University. He was awarded a fellowship by the Society of Woodrow Wilson Scholars at Princeton University in 2009 and 2010, and a fellowship by the Getty Research Institute for 2010–11. Fontenot is the coauthor of New Orleans Under Reconstruction: The Crisis of Planning with Michael Sorkin and Carol McMichael Reese (Verso, 2014). His design work was highlighted in the American pavilion at the 2010 Architecture Biennial in Venice as part of a collaborative project titled “The Mississippi Delta: Constructing with Water.” He was cocurator of the exhibitions Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines, 196X–197X, Pedro E. Guerrero: Photographs of Modern Life (2012), and the 2011 Gwangju Design Biennial in South Korea, and has organized many symposia, including “Sustainable Dialogues” (2007–08), “What Is Design?” (2011), and “Questioning the Standard: New Narratives of Art in Los Angeles” (2011) at the Getty Research Institute.
Steve Frykholm, creative director and vice president at Herman Miller, earned his master of fine arts at Cranbrook Academy of Art and started at Herman Miller as a graphic designer in 1970. He was responsible for creating the company’s image as it emerged as a Fortune 500 company. In addition to his outstanding work for the company, he designed posters for the Herman Miller annual company picnic, which have become part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art. He was the first Michigan graphic designer to receive the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) Fellow Award in 2006 and the AIGA Medal in 2010.
Dale Allen Gyure is a professor of architecture at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan, where he teaches classes in architectural history and theory. He is also an adjunct assistant professor of historic preservation at Goucher College, where he teaches a course in American architectural history and serves as codirector of the master’s thesis program. Gyure’s research focuses on American and Modern architecture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has published two books, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Florida Southern College (University Press of Florida, 2010) and The Chicago Schoolhouse: High School Architecture and Educational Reform, 1856–2006 (Center for American Places, 2011), as well as numerous articles and chapters. His current project is a study of Detroit Modernist architect Minoru Yamasaki. Gyure serves on the boards of directors of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy and the Society of Architectural Historians, as well as being a member of the Wayne State University Minoru Yamasaki Advisory Board.
Alan Hess, architect and historian, is the architecture critic of the San Jose Mercury News. His nineteen books on Midcentury Modern architecture and urbanism include Frank Lloyd Wright: Natural Design, Organic Architecture (Rizzoli, 2012). Hess has written monographs on architects Oscar Niemeyer, Frank Lloyd Wright, and John Lautner, as well as architectural histories of Las Vegas and Palm Springs. Hess’s other books include Googie Redux: Ultramodern Roadside Architecture (Chronicle, 2004), Forgotten Modern (Gibbs Smith, 2007), and The Ranch House (Abrams, 2005). He is currently researching the architecture of Irvine, California, one of the United States’s largest master-planned communities of the 1960s and 1970s. Hess was a National Arts Journalism Program fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and received a grant from the Graham Foundation. Active in the preservation of post–World War II architecture, he has qualified several significant Midcentury Modern buildings for the National Register of Historic Places, including the oldest McDonald’s drive-in restaurant.
Katherine Kirby White is an architectural historian and a historic preservation and redevelopment consultant. She holds a master’s degree in historic preservation from Eastern Michigan University and a bachelor’s degree in art and architectural history from Hope College. She previously worked for the Michigan State Historic Preservation Office and was a contributor to the Michigan Modern project, conducting extensive archival research for both Michigan Modern: Design That Shaped America exhibits, at Cranbrook Art Museum and the Grand Rapids Art Museum. She also wrote the National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Frank and Dorothy (Feinauer) Ward House in Battle Creek, Michigan, designed by Taliesin fellow Yuzuru “LeRoy” Kawahara, and an accompanying article for the Recent Past Preservation Network. White is a founding board member of the Michigan chapter of Docomomo, and serves on the Oakland County Historical Commission.
Reed Kroloff, the former director of Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, is an independent architectural consultant and commentator, and a principal with jones|kroloff. Kroloff previously was dean of the Tulane School of Architecture and the editor in chief of Architecture magazine. Kroloff was also an assistant dean and a tenured professor at Arizona State University. He is the recipient of the American Academy in Rome’s 2003 Rome Prize Fellowship. His writing has appeared in many magazines and newspapers, ranging from Metropolis to Artforum, and he has been profiled by publications including the New York Times. Kroloff is a frequent lecturer at conferences and schools around the country, and serves as a board member to a number of nonprofit organizations.
Clark Malcolm has worked as a writer and editor for Herman Miller for thirty-one years in all parts of the company. Clark has degrees from Southwestern at Memphis (now known as Rhodes College) and the University of Michigan, where he taught English for ten years as a graduate student. Clark has written, coauthored, or edited sixteen books on leadership, design, architecture, and facility management.
Craig McDonald is the director of the Alden B. Dow Home and Studio and the foundation representative for the Alden and Vada Dow Family Foundations. Under his direction in 2000, the Dow Home and Studio was awarded recognition for the “preservation and care of collections” from Heritage Preservation and the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. McDonald is a past board member of the Michigan Humanities Council and the Michigan Historic Preservation Network. He is currently the board chair for the Midland Area Community Foundation.
Jayne Merkel, an architectural historian and critic, is book review editor of Architectural Record and a New York–based contributing editor of Architectural Design in London. She’s a former editor of Oculus magazine in New York and former architecture critic of the Cincinnati Enquirer. Her master’s thesis “Eliel Saarinen at Cranbrook” became the basis of her much later monograph, Eero Saarinen (Phaidon, 2005), and the script for the Mid-America Emmy–winning 2006 documentary film The Gateway Arch: A Reflection of America. She directed the graduate program in architecture and design criticism at New School University, taught writing at the University of Cincinnati, and taught art history at the Rhode Island School of Design, Miami University of Ohio, and the Art Academy of Cincinnati. She has also worked as a curator at Cincinnati’s Contemporary Art Center, Taft Museum of Art, and the University of Michigan Museum of Art, and organized numerous exhibitions.
Jim Miller-Melberg is a sculptor, painter, and product designer. He attended the University of Michigan College of Architecture and Design and Wayne State University. He studied in England and France prior to serving in the U.S. Army in Korea. When he returned to the United States, he attended Cranbrook Academy of Art before becoming an instructor of sculpture and design at the University of Michigan. In 1960 he founded the company Form, Inc., which designed and manufactured play sculptures for twenty-one years. Since 1961 he has worked independently as a sculptor and designer. His unique and highly recognizable sculptural play forms are found all over the world.
Debbie Millman is president of the Design Division at Sterling Brands; president of AIGA, the largest professional association for design; and chair of the master’s in branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She hosts a weekly Internet talk radio show entitled Design Matters with Debbie Millman.
Mira Nakashima, president of George Nakashima Woodworker, S.A., was born in Seattle in 1942, interned in Minidoka on the Idaho desert during World War II, and moved to Antonin Raymond’s farm in New Hope, Pennsylvania in 1943, where her father, designer George Nakashima, continued his furniture-making venture and designed and built his own shop and house in 1947. She received a bachelor of arts cum laude from Harvard University in 1963. After a trip to Japan with Alan Watts, she enrolled in the graduate program at Waseda University in Tokyo and received her master’s in architecture there in 1966. Mira has worked at George Nakashima Woodworkers since 1970, becoming head designer when her father died in 1990, and president when her mother died in 2004. Abrams published her book Nature Form & Spirit on her father’s life and legacy in 2003. She has four children and seven grandchildren.
Todd Oldham is a well-known designer whose career spans more than twenty years. Distinguished as an innovator of accessible design, Oldham is the founder of Todd Oldham Studio, a multifaceted, full-service design studio based in New York City. Originally a New York fashion designer, and the host of “Todd Time” on MTV’s House of Style, Todd’s career has evolved to include all areas of design, from interior design, film, and photography, to furniture and graphic design. Todd’s nineteenth book is Charley Harper’s Animal Kingdom (AMMO, 2012). His previous books include a 672-page monograph on the life’s work of artist Alexander Girard, a unique ongoing series called Place Space that explores singular places and the uncommonly devoted people that create them, and an artist’s monograph on the brilliant, warped work of Wayne White. Most recently he’s created Kid Made Modern, a collection of art supplies and kits available at all Target locations.
Tracy Powell is an award-winning author and journalist, past managing editor of Automobile Quarterly, and a member of Cummins Power Speakers, a Toastmasters International chapter. He is author of General Motors Styling, 1927–1958: Genesis of the World’s Largest Design Studios (Powell House, 2007) and American Auto Legends: Classics of Style and Design (Chartwell, 2013). He has also coauthored several automotive titles, including Cadillac at 100: Legacy of Leadership (Automobile Heritage, 2008), and edited titles including The Buick: A Complete History (Princeton Publishing, 1980). He is currently employed as a technical writer at Cummins, Inc., and lives in southern Indiana.
Jessica L. Puff is an architectural historian at the Hawaii State Historic Preservation Division. She earned her bachelor of science from Syracuse University in environmental design and her master of science from Eastern Michigan University in historic preservation and preservation planning. Puff previously spent six years working for the Michigan State Historic Preservation Office conducting research and writing content for the Michigan Modern website and the Michigan Modern: Design That Shaped America exhibitions at Cranbrook Art Museum and the Grand Rapids Art Museum.
Rip Rapson, an attorney and expert in urban policy, is president and CEO of The Kresge Foundation, a $3.1 billion private national foundation based in metropolitan Detroit. From 2006 to 2010, Rapson led the eighty-seven-year-old philanthropic organization in a transition to expand and recalibrate its grant making. Seven strategically focused programs have emerged: Arts and Culture, Community Development, Detroit, Education, Environment, Health, and Human Services. Each seeks to influence the quality of life for those living in low-income and underserved communities. To facilitate this work, Rapson has put into practice the use of multiple funding methods, including operating support, project support, and program-related investments. These new tools complement Kresge’s historic, and formerly exclusive, use of the facilities-capital challenge grant. In 2011 the board of trustees approved 346 awards totaling $170 million; $140 million was paid out to grantees over the course of the year. He is the son of architect Ralph Rapson.
Geoffrey D. Reynolds has been the director of the Joint Archives of Holland at Hope College since 2001. Previously he served as the collections archivist from 1997 to 2001. He graduated from Wayne State University with a master’s in library and information science and an archival administration certificate in 1995. He has worked at various times for InfoFlo as a records management specialist, the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, General Motors Media Archives, and Little Caesars Enterprises on its Detroit Tigers baseball club archival materials. He currently serves as the chair of the Holland Historical Trust Board of Trustees, treasurer of the Dutch-American Historical Commission, membership chairperson for the Association for the Advancement of Dutch American Studies, and executive director of the Holland Area Historical Society. His research and writing interests include the pleasure boatbuilding industry of Holland and vintage boat racing history.
Susan Skarsgard is an artist and designer known internationally for her original work that involves site-specific installation art, artist books, graphic design, and calligraphy. Her work is widely collected by individuals and institutions, some of which include the Library of Congress Rare Book Room, the Newberry Library in Chicago, the University of Michigan Special Collections Library, Akademie der Künste in Berlin, and Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. As a lecturer and teacher, Skarsgard has conducted workshops and presentations for numerous institutions, organizations, and conferences, traveling extensively throughout North America, Australia, and Europe. She has worked for eighteen years as a design manager at General Motors and holds a master of fine arts degree from the University of Michigan.
Susan S. Szenasy is deputy publisher and editor in chief of Metropolis, the award-winning New York City–based magazine of architecture, culture, and design. Since 1986 she has led the magazine through decades of landmark design journalism, achieving domestic and international recognition. A pioneer in connecting environmental stewardship with design, she and her staff continue to look for cutting-edge thinking on both environmental and social sustainability.
Todd A. Walsh is an architectural historian with the Michigan State Historic Preservation Office. He holds a bachelor of arts degree in history from Michigan State University, a master of public administration degree from Western Michigan University, and is a member of the Phi Alpha Theta and Pi Alpha Alpha honor societies. He is a lead contributor to the Michigan Modern project, and was the coauthor for several of the project’s National Register of Historic Places nominations.
Gregory Wittkopp has been shaping and stewarding the Cranbrook Educational Community’s collections for three decades, first as a curator then as the director of Cranbrook Art Museum, and now as the founding director of the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research. Major projects at the museum include restoring Saarinen House, acquiring the Dr. John and Rose M. Shuey Collection of contemporary art, and overseeing the restoration of the Eliel Saarinen–designed galleries and the creation of the state-of-the-art 30,000-square-foot Collections Wing, a $22 million project completed in 2011. As the center’s director, Wittkopp is charged with overseeing Cranbrook’s two historic house-museums, Saarinen House and Cranbrook House and Gardens, its campus-wide collection of cultural properties, and the Cranbrook Archives, and providing programming and access to these buildings and collections for scholars and visitors from around the world.