Cranbrook^259
Katherine McCoyAccused of being a cloistered
atmosphere polluted by its own
freedoms, the graphic design program at
the Cranbrook Academy of Art was
certainly in the forefront of design
criticism from the late 1970 s through the
1990 s. One might expect to find guerrilla
theoreticians lobbing graphic cherry
bombs at mainstream modernism, but,
in fact, Cranbrook’s influence did not
come from launching manifestoes; it
developed by creating a stimulating
environment where graphic
experimentation altered the conventional
practice of graphic design. According to
Katherine McCoy (b. 1945 ), chairwoman
of the graphic design program from 1971
to 1995 , the work done during that time
can be loosely organized into three
“clusters of concerns”: the expansion of modernism’s formal language
( 1971 – 1979 ), a short middle phase characterized by “high formalism”
( 1980 – 1981 ), and a third, poststructuralist stage ( 1982 – 1995 ). Criticism
notwithstanding, Cranbrook’s explorations served as fodder for rigorous
discourse that helped define and expand the profession during the 1980 s.
Although Cranbrook embraced the Bauhaus notion of unity
between art and industry, as early as 1940 , when Charles Eames became
chairman of the department of industrial design and Eero Saarinen and
Harry Bertoia were on the faculty, Cranbrook had replaced the rigidity of
Bauhaus ideology with a more complex, eclectic approach in which
personal directions were encouraged. It was in this context that Katherine
and Michael McCoy became co-chairs of the design department in 1971 .In
what started out as a part-time position, Katherine was responsible for two-
dimensional design and Mike the three-dimensional design of furniture,
interiors, and products.
How did the institution that Paul Goldberger described in the
New York Times Magazine(April 1984 ) as “part artist’s colony, part school,