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.

