Exhibition Detail

Photo by Martha Swope. © Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Unsettled

The Work of Edward Gorey
September 18, 2016 - March 12, 2017
deSalle Gallery

Edward Gorey’s masterful pen-and-ink drawings that illustrate his captivating books conjure a vaguely Edwardian world of handcars, boater hats, and Dickensian children. With titles such as The Hapless Child, The Loathsome Couple, and The Fatal Lozenge, Gorey’s protagonists often meet an untimely demise. Despite the subject matter, his work transcends the mere macabre, offering instead a dark humor that has found contemporary resonance with cultural phenomena from Goth and steampunk to Lemony Snicket and Tim Burton. Although Gorey’s métier was the illustrated novel, his talent and reach extended to other creative realms, including his Tony Award-winning and hauntingly beautiful stage sets and costumes for a 1977 Broadway production of Dracula. Unsettled: The Work of Edward Gorey features many of his famed publications, including several elaborately designed artist’s books and other assorted ephemera and memorabilia.

Unsettled: The Work of Edward Gorey is curated by Andrew Blauvelt, Director of the Cranbrook Art Museum, and Judy Dyki, Director of the Cranbrook Academy of Art Library, and features works on loan from a local collector. Cranbrook Art Museum is supported, in part, by its membership organization, ArtMembers@Cranbrook; the Museum Committee of Cranbrook Art Museum; and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts.