51 Notable alumni of
Cranbrook Academy of Art
Updated:
The Cranbrook Academy of Art is 929th in the world, 339th in North America, and 317th in the United States by aggregated alumni prominence. Below is the list of 51 notable alumni from the Cranbrook Academy of Art sorted by their wiki pages popularity. The directory includes famous graduates and former students along with research and academic staff.
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Selma Blair
- Occupations
- film actorvoice actortelevision actoractor
- Biography
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Selma Blair is an American actress. She is known for her roles in Cruel Intentions, Legally Blonde, The Sweetest Thing, and the Hellboy franchise.
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Renée Elise Goldsberry
- Occupations
- stage actorsingeractortelevision actorfilm actor
- Biography
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Renée Elise Goldsberry is an American actress and singer. Known for her roles on stage and screen she has received a Tony Award, a Drama Desk Award, and a Grammy Award as well as a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award.
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Daniel Ellsberg
- Occupations
- opinion journalistwhistleblowermilitary officerintelligence analystpolitical activist
- Biography
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Daniel Ellsberg was an American political activist, economist, and United States military analyst. While employed by the RAND Corporation, he precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other newspapers.
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Alexi Lalas
- Occupations
- musicianassociation football player
- Biography
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Panayotis Alexander Lalas is an American former soccer player who played mostly as a defender. Lalas is best known for his participation with the United States men's national soccer team in the 1994 FIFA World Cup, where his appearance made him a standout player on the team with his distinctive long beard and hair. After the World Cup, Lalas went on to become the first American in Italy's Serie A as a member of Calcio Padova.
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William Talman
- Occupations
- actorfilm actorscreenwriterstage actortelevision actor
- Biography
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William Whitney Talman Jr. was an American television and movie actor, best known for playing Los Angeles District Attorney Hamilton Burger in the television series Perry Mason.
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Ann Romney
- Occupations
- homemakerpolitician
- Biography
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Ann Lois Romney is an American author and philanthropist. She is the wife of businessman and politician Senator Mitt Romney of Utah. From 2003 to 2007, Romney was First Lady of Massachusetts, while her husband served as governor.
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Bob Woodruff
- Occupations
- war correspondentjournalist
- Biography
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Robert Warren Woodruff is an American television journalist. Since 1996, he has served as a reporter for ABC News. Woodruff co-anchored ABC World News Tonight in 2006 with journalist Elizabeth Vargas. He was severely injured by an IED explosion during a reporting trip to Iraq that January, and he recovered over an extended period before returning to air.
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Bill Prady
- Occupations
- screenwriterfilm producertelevision producer
- Biography
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William Scott Prady is an American television writer and producer known for co-creating and producing The Big Bang Theory (2007–2019) and The Muppets (2015–2016). He also served as an executive producer on Dharma & Greg (1997–2002), Good Morning, Miami (2003), and Gilmore Girls (1997–2002).
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Fumihiko Maki
- Occupations
- university teacherarchitectteacheropinion journalist
- Biography
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Fumihiko Maki was a Japanese architect. In 1993, he received the Pritzker Prize for his work, which often explores pioneering uses of new materials and fuses the cultures of east and west. Maki died on 6 June 2024, at the age of 95.
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Alan Simpson
- Occupations
- lawyerpolitician
- Biography
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Alan Kooi Simpson is an American politician from Wyoming. A member of the Republican Party, he served as a member of the United States Senate from 1979 to 1997. Simpson was the Republican whip in the U.S. Senate from 1985 to 1995, as majority whip from 1985 to 1987 and minority whip from 1987 to 1995. He also served as co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform with Democratic Party co-chair Erskine Bowles of North Carolina.
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Scott McNealy
- Occupations
- computer scientistbusinessperson
- Biography
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Scott McNealy is an American businessman. He is most famous for co-founding the computer technology company Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Andy Bechtolsheim. In 2004, while still at Sun, McNealy founded Curriki, a free online education service. In 2011, he co-founded Wayin, a social intelligence and visualization company based in Denver. McNealy stepped down from his position as CEO of Wayin in 2016.
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Napoleon Abueva
- Occupations
- stage actorsculptor
- Biography
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Napoleon "Billy" Veloso Abueva was known as the "Father of Modern Philippine Sculpture" Through Proclamation No. 1539. He was proclaimed National Artist for Sculpture in 1976 when he was 46, making him the youngest recipient of the award to date.
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Duane Hanson
- Occupations
- photographerpainterinstallation artistsculptor
- Biography
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Duane Hanson was an American artist and sculptor born in Minnesota. He spent most of his career in South Florida. He was known for his life-sized realistic sculptures of people. He cast the works based on human models in various materials, including polyester resin, fiberglass, Bondo, and bronze. Hanson's works are in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The Smithsonian.
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Thomas McGuane
- Occupations
- short story writerfilm directorautobiographerscreenwriterwriter
- Biography
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Thomas Francis McGuane III is an American writer. His work includes ten novels, short fiction and screenplays, as well as three collections of essays devoted to his life in the outdoors. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Cutting Horse Association Members Hall of Fame and the Fly Fishing Hall of Fame. McGuane's papers, manuscripts, and correspondence are located in the Montana State University Archives and Special Collections and are available for research use. In 2023, he was given the first Award for Excellence in Service to the MSU Library for the advancement of scholarship and access to unique materials.
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Edmund White
- Occupations
- memoiristplaywrightliterary criticjournalistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Edmund Valentine White III is a gay American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer and essayist. He is the recipient of Lambda Literary's Visionary Award, the National Book Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award, and the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction. France made him Chevalier (and later Officier) de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1993.
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Pete Dawkins
- Occupations
- politicianAmerican football player
- Biography
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Peter Miller Dawkins is an American business executive and former college football player, hockey player, military officer, and political candidate. Dawkins attended the United States Military Academy, where he played as a halfback for the Army Cadets football team from 1956 to 1958. As a senior in 1958 he won the Heisman Trophy, the Maxwell Award, and was named as a consensus All-American. After graduating from the Military Academy in 1959, he studied at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Dawkins served as an officer in the United States Army until he retired in 1983 with the rank of brigadier general. He received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Bernard W. Rogers, USA in 1983. He was a Republican candidate for United States Senate in 1988. Dawkins has held executive positions with Lehman Brothers, Bain & Company, Primerica, and Citigroup.
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Natalie Zemon Davis
- Occupations
- women's rights activistscreenwriteruniversity teacherwriterhistorian
- Biography
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Natalie Zemon Davis, CC was an American-Canadian historian of the early modern period. She was the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at Princeton University. Her work originally focused on France, but it later broadened to include other parts of Europe, North America, and the Caribbean. For example, her book, Trickster Travels (2006), views Italy, Spain, Morocco and other parts of North Africa and West Africa through the lens of Leo Africanus's pioneering geography. (By 2023, the text had appeared in six translations.) Davis' books have all been translated into other languages: twenty-two for The Return of Martin Guerre. She was the second female president of the American Historical Association (the first, Nellie Neilson, was in 1943).
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Harry Bertoia
- Occupations
- graphic artistfurniture designerprintmakeruniversity teachersculptor
- Biography
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Harry Bertoia was an Italian-born American artist, sound art sculptor, and modern furniture designer.
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Todd A. Kessler
- Occupations
- television producerscreenwritershowrunnerfilm director
- Biography
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Todd A. Kessler is an American screenwriter, playwright, television producer and director.
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David Trott
- Occupations
- business executivepoliticianlawyer
- Biography
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David Alan Trott is an American attorney and retired politician who served as the U.S. representative from Michigan's 11th congressional district from 2015 to 2019. He is a member of the Republican Party.
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Gyo Obata
- Occupations
- architect
- Biography
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Gyo Obata was an American architect, the son of painter Chiura Obata and his wife, Haruko Obata, a floral designer. In 1955, he co-founded the global architectural firm HOK (formerly Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum). He lived in St. Louis, Missouri, and worked in HOK's St. Louis office. He designed several notable buildings, including the McDonnell Planetarium and GROW Pavilion at the Saint Louis Science Center, the Independence Temple of the Community of Christ church, the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.
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Michael Barone
- Occupations
- journalist
- Biography
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Michael D. Barone is an American conservative political analyst, historian, pundit and journalist. He is best known as the principal author of The Almanac of American Politics.
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Nick Cave
- Occupations
- sound artistartistfashion designerwritercostume designer
- Biography
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Nick Cave is an American sculptor, dancer, performance artist, and professor. He is best known for his Soundsuit series: wearable assemblage fabric sculptures that are bright, whimsical, and other-worldly, often made with found objects. He also trained as a dancer with Alvin Ailey and often incorporates dance and performance into his works. His later sculptures have focused on color theory and included mixed media and large-scale installations. He lives in Chicago, Illinois, and directs the graduate fashion program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He continues to work on Soundsuits as well as works completed as a sculptor, dancer, and performance artist.
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Patrick Brown
- Occupations
- ice hockey player
- Biography
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Patrick Wellington Brown is an American professional ice hockey forward and captain for the Providence Bruins in the American Hockey League (AHL) while under contract to the Boston Bruins of the National Hockey League (NHL). He previously played for the Carolina Hurricanes, Vegas Golden Knights, Philadelphia Flyers and Ottawa Senators. He won the Calder Cup with Carolina's AHL affiliate, the Charlotte Checkers in 2019.
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Bing Gordon
- Years
- 1950-.. (age 75)
- Occupations
- engineer
- Biography
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William "Bing" Gordon is a video game executive and technology venture capitalist. He served ten years as Chief Creative Officer of video game publisher and developer Electronic Arts prior to his current partnership with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB). He was a founding director of Audible.com and has served on several high-profile Boards of Directors including Amazon, Ngmoco, Duolingo, and Zynga. He designed the video games Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Sid Meier's SimGolf and The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth.
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Dan Dickerson
- Occupations
- sports commentator
- Biography
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Daniel Hill Dickerson is an American sportscaster, best known for his current position as the lead radio play-by-play voice of Major League Baseball's Detroit Tigers on the Detroit Tigers Radio Network.
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Olga de Amaral
- Enrolled in the Cranbrook Academy of Art
- Studied in 1954
- Occupations
- weaverdesignertextile artist
- Biography
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Olga de Amaral is a Colombian textile and visual artist known for her large-scale abstract works made with fibers and covered in gold and/or silver leaf. Because of her ability to reconcile local concerns with international developments, de Amaral became one of the few artists from South America to become internationally known for her work in fiber during the 1960s and ‘70s. She is also considered an important practitioner in the development of postwar Latin American Abstraction. She currently lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia.
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Jack Lenor Larsen
- Occupations
- weaverartisttextile artistdesignertextile designer
- Biography
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Jack Lenor Larsen was an American textile designer, author, collector and promoter of traditional and contemporary craftsmanship. He was noted for bringing fabric patterns and textiles to go with modernist architecture and furnishings. Some of his works are part of permanent collections at museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs at the Louvre, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, which has his most significant archive.
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Robbie Buhl
- Occupations
- racing automobile driver
- Biography
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Robbie Buhl is an American former race car driver who competed in the Indy Racing League. He was a color commentator for the IndyCar races on Versus. In 2016, Robbie, along with his brother Tom Buhl, started Buhl Sport Detroit, a motorsports marketing company, professional race team, and teen driving program based in Detroit, MI.
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Ivan Krstić
- Born in
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Croatia - Occupations
- engineer
- Biography
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Ivan Krstić is a Croatian computer security expert, currently working on core security at Apple Inc. Krstić was previously the director of security architecture at One Laptop per Child. He is a co-author of The Official Ubuntu Book.
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Anne Wilson
- Occupations
- installation artistartist
- Biography
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Anne Wilson is a Chicago-based visual artist. Wilson creates sculpture, drawings, Internet projects, photography, performance, and DVD stop motion animations employing table linens, bed sheets, human hair, lace, thread and wire. Her work extends the traditional processes of fiber art (techniques such as stitching, crocheting, and knitting) to other media. Wilson is a professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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Ward Just
- Occupations
- war correspondentwriternovelistjournalist
- Biography
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Ward Swift Just was an American writer. He was a war correspondent and the author of 19 novels and numerous short stories.
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Rob Edwards
- Occupations
- screenwriter
- Biography
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Rob Edwards is an American television and feature film screenwriter and producer. His writing includes the Disney animated feature films Treasure Planet and The Princess and the Frog, both of which were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. In 2009, along with Ron Clements and John Musker, Edwards was awarded the Best Screenplay award from the African-American Film Critics Association for The Princess and the Frog.
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Niels Diffrient
- Occupations
- businesspersonarchitectindustrial designer
- Biography
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Niels Diffrient was an American industrial designer. Diffrient focused mainly on ergonomic seating, and his most well known designs are the Freedom and Liberty chairs, manufactured by Humanscale.
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Sonya Clark
- Enrolled in the Cranbrook Academy of Art
- In 1995 graduated with Master of Fine Arts
- Occupations
- artist
- Biography
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Sonya Clark is an American artist of Afro-Caribbean heritage. Clark is a fiber artist known for using a variety of materials including human hair and combs to address race, culture, class, and history. Her beaded headdress assemblages and braided wig series of the late 1990s, which received critical acclaim, evoked African traditions of personal adornment and moved these common forms into the realm of personal and political expression. Although African art and her Caribbean background are important influences, Clark also builds on practices of assemblage and accumulation used by American artists such as Betye Saar and David Hammons.
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Frances Rich
- Occupations
- film actorstage actorsculptoractor
- Biography
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Frances Rich was an American actress, artist, and sculptor. She was the daughter of actress Irene Rich.
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Charles Pachter
- Occupations
- paintersculptor
- Biography
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Charles Pachter OC OOnt is a Canadian contemporary artist. He is a painter, printmaker, sculptor, designer, historian, and lecturer. He studied French literature at the Sorbonne, art history at the University of Toronto, and painting and graphics at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He holds honorary doctorates from Lakehead University, Brock University, the Ontario College of Art & Design and the University of Toronto (2010). He was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 1999, and promoted to Officer in 2011.
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Elliott Earls
- Years
- 1966-.. (age 59)
- Occupations
- graphic designersculptor
- Biography
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Elliott Peter Earls is an American graphic designer, artist and one man band performance artist. He is an artist-in-residence and head of the graduate graphic design department at the Cranbrook Academy of Art.
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Walter Hamady
- Occupations
- artist
- Biography
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Walter Samuel Haatoum Hamady was an American artist, book designer, papermaker, poet and teacher. He is especially known for his innovative efforts in letterpress printing, bookbinding, and papermaking. In the mid-1960s, he founded The Perishable Press Limited and the Shadwell Papermill, and soon after joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he taught for more than thirty years.
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Bruce D. Smith
- Occupations
- anthropologistarchaeologistcurator
- Biography
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Bruce D. Smith is an American archaeologist and curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History who primarily focuses on the interaction of humans with their environment, especially the origins of agriculture in eastern North America agricultural complex.
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James Edmund Jeffries
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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James Edmund Jeffries was a U.S. Representative from Kansas from 1979 to 1983.
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Howard Kottler
- Occupations
- ceramicist
- Biography
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Howard William Kottler was an American ceramist, conceptual artist, and professor of ceramics at the University of Washington, credited as a seminal force in redefining the direction of contemporary American ceramic art.
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Carol Wald
- Years
- 1935-2001 (aged 66)
- Occupations
- artist
- Biography
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Carol S. Wald was an American artist who was also widely known for her talents as an illustrator. Her collages and paintings appeared in Time, Fortune, and Ms, and on the covers of Business Week, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, and Saturday Review.
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Alice Kagawa Parrott
- Occupations
- ceramicistartist
- Biography
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Alice Kagawa Parrott was a Japanese American fiber artist and ceramicist. She spent most of her adult life in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she established a reputation as one of the country's most important weavers, and opened one of Santa Fe's first shops devoted weaving and crafts.
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James C. Harrison
- Occupations
- artist
- Biography
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James C. Harrison was a Detroit, Michigan artist based in Brooklyn, New York. His work is complex, layered and full of Jungian, religious and mystical references used to relay his internal battles and demons. Harrison drew inspiration from mythology, psychiatry, poetry, music, philosophy and artists of the past. His ever-evolving style - often equated to Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg and other contemporaries - always maintained a cutting-edge quality that was anchored in his own deep philosophical tendencies.
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David Rowland
- Occupations
- inventorindustrial designerfurniture makerdesignermilitary personnel
- Biography
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David Lincoln Rowland was an American industrial designer noted for inventing the 40/4 Chair. The chair was the first compactly stackable chair invented, and is able to stack 40 chairs 4 feet (120 cm) high.
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Blane De St. Croix
- Occupations
- sculptor
- Biography
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Blane De St. Croix is an artist best known for his monumental landscape sculptures and installations.
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John Beardman
- Occupations
- painter
- Biography
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John Beardman is a contemporary American artist. He is an abstract expressionist and a major contributor to “art as process” and "action painting" influenced by Willem de Kooning. His work has been the subject of several exhibitions in New York City, Louisville, Kentucky, Birmingham, Michigan, and Nova Scotia, Canada. Beardman has received numerous creative artist's grants and fellowships. He currently lives and works in Pennsylvania and has a Studio in Manhattan, New York City.
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Lycia Trouton
- Occupations
- installation artist
- Biography
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Lycia Danielle Trouton is a United Kingdom-born Canadian visual artist, teacher, and curator. She is known for her "Linen Memorial", a tribute to those that died in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. Trouton resides in British Columbia, Canada, and Belfast, Northern Ireland.
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Karyn Olivier
- Occupations
- visual artist
- Biography
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Karyn Olivier is a Philadelphia-based artist who creates public art, sculptures, installations and photography. Olivier alters familiar objects, spaces, and locations, often reinterpreting the role of monuments. Her work intersects histories and memories with present-day narratives.
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Beth Katleman
- Occupations
- sculptor
- Biography
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Beth Katleman is an American artist known for porcelain assemblage sculpture cast from found objects. Her allegorical installations fall within the genre of pop surrealism, combining decorative elements, such as Rococo embellishments and 19th century Toile de Jouy wallpaper scenery, with satirical references to consumer culture, fairy tales and classic literature. Katleman's work is in private and institutional collections and is exhibited internationally, including an installation commissioned by architect Peter Marino for Christian Dior, in the Hong Kong and London flagship boutiques. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and is the recipient of the 2011 Moët Hennessey Prize, a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation grant, the Watershed Generation X Award, a Kohler Arts/Industry Fellowship and a residency in Cortona, Italy sponsored by the University of Georgia, Athens. Katleman holds a BA in English from Stanford University, an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and an MBA in Arts Management from UCLA.
