IN-PERSON LECTURE AND CONVERSATION WITH DR. KENDALL BROWN
Cranbrook Art Museum de Salle Auditorium
39221 Woodward Avenue Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304
Before the lecture, from 3:00 to 4:30pm, Center Director Gregory Wittkopp and Cranbrook Japanese Garden Designer Sadafumi Uchiyama (now based in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan) will be welcoming visitors in the Cranbrook Japanese Garden and discussing its ongoing rejuvenation.
Lecture Admission:
$20 for Adults and Seniors
$15 for Cranbrook House & Gardens Auxiliary Members
$10 for Full-time Students and Cranbrook Alumni
Seating is Limited; Advance Registration Required
Presented by Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
ABOUT THE LECTURE
The Cranbrook Japanese Garden is among the oldest Japanese-style gardens in North America. Created in 1915 as part of the country estate of Cranbrook’s founders, newspaper publishers George and Ellen Booth, the one-acre, pond-style strolling garden is undergoing a transformative rejuvenation, which includes the newly completed New Entrance Garden designed by Sadafumi Uchiyama.
This illustrated lecture, by Dr. Kendall Brown from California State University Long Beach, explores the context for the Booths’ Japanese garden at Cranbrook. It first traces the illustrious history of Japanese gardens on estates across the United States—from Isabella Stewart Gardner’s pioneering landscape at Green Hill, her 40-acre estate in Brookline near Boston, through those at long vanished country homes—to show the uses and abuses of Japanese garden culture. The lecture then charts the transformation of estate gardens into heritage institutions, focusing on the gardens for the Rockefellers at Kykuit (Sleepy Hollow, New York), Isabel Longdon Stine at Hakone (Saratoga, California), and Henry Huntington (San Marino, California). It concludes by suggesting some ways that Japanese gardens, including the Cranbrook Japanese Garden, can maintain their relevance and help them flourish.
Dr. Kendall Brown first lectured at Cranbrook in April 2016. His presentation and conversations led to the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research’s commitment to the rejuvenation of the Cranbrook Japanese Garden and the selection of Sadafumi Uchiyama as the designer of the garden’s Master Plan (2018) and the New Entrance Garden (2025).