TOP: Pioneering textile
artist and interior
designer Ruth Adler
Schnee, 96, at the recent
opening of her exhibit at
Cranbrook Museum of
Art. FAR LEFT: Ruth Adler
Schnee, Seedy Weeds,
1953, ink on angel stripe
haircloth.
LEFT: Ruth Adler Schnee,
Wireworks, 1950, ink on
white dreamspun batiste.

Arts&Life

exhibit

34 | DECEMBER 26 • 2019

Still
Designing

At 96, interior design pioneer
Ruth Adler Schnee is feted
with a Cranbrook exhibit.

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
T

extile artist and interior designer Ruth Adler
Schnee, at 96, is fulfilling a 20-year work
contract signed shortly after she turned 91.
At the request of Knoll Textiles, headquartered in
Pennsylvania, Schnee has reimagined earlier projects
and developed a new one.
Attention to Schnee’
s lengthy and diverse career,
until recently based in Michigan, returned her to the
area for the opening of an exhibit spotlighting her
acclaimed projects. The Cranbrook Art Museum
is showcasing, now through March 20, Ruth Adler
Schnee: Modern Designs for Living.
It will be joined by two other exhibits, In the
Vanguard: Haystack Mountain School of Crafts,
1950-1969 (through March 8) and Christy Matson:
Crossings (through March 15). Together, the three
explore crafts and the innovative artists and teaching
methods that shaped the field.
“I love color, and I have fun working with it,
”
Schnee told the JN in 2002, when she was living in
Southfield and preparing for another exhibit. “I think
of my designs as a blend of modern and classical ele-
ments inspired by my surroundings.
”
Schnee, who moved to Colorado to be closer to
one of her three children and grandchildren, is being
represented by some 80 textiles and other items that
open her world to the public. Prestigious present-
ers, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in
London, hold her work in their permanent collec-
tions.
“We’
re showing a number of textiles she’
s donated
to the Cranbrook Art Museum over the years and
also a number that she’
s been really generous to loan
to us,
” says curator Ian Gabriel Wilson, Jeanne and
Ralph Graham Collections fellow at the museum.
The arrangement of the exhibit and the book that
goes with it, holding photos and archival drawings,
place Schnee in a historical continuum that demon-

strates how she contributed to the look
and feel of the mid-century modern
interior.
Schnee worked with famous archi-
tects such as Albert Kahn, Minoru
Yamasaki and Louis DesRosiers and
brought her talents to projects that
involved General Motors and Ford.
Raised in a Jewish family that fled
Hitler’
s Germany, she brought her
feelings of religious heritage into work

for Temple Israel, Tempe Kol Ami and
senior apartments in West Bloomfield.
“Ruth was really trained as an archi-
tect and wanted to become one, but due
to the field in 1946, when she graduat-
ed from Cranbrook, that opportunity
wasn’
t available to her because of her
status as a woman,
” Wilson explains
about Schnee, who studied fashion
design at Cass Technical High School
and interior architecture at the Rhode

SUZANNE BLANCHETTE

PD REARICK

details
Ruth Adler Schnee:
Modern Designs for
Living will be on
view through March
20 at the Cranbrook
Art Museum in
Bloomfield Hills.
$6-$10; free for
ArtMembers and
children 12 and
younger. (248) 645-
3320. cranbrookart
museum.org.