Michael Stone-Richards

Michael STONE-RICHARDS is a scholar-teacher of critical theory / biopolitics, comparative literary / and visual studies, Social Practice, and the history and theory of modern and contemporary art practice. He has published widely in French and English on the avant-garde in poetry, critical theory, and art. Since his arrival in Detroit, he has become deeply involved in the various parts of its arts and performance community, beginning with MOCAD, where he was a founding member of the Program Committee and a co-curator of the exhibition ReFUSING Fashion on Rei Kawakubo and Comme des garçons; he has also served on the founding board of advisors for the Kresge Arts in Detroit, and is a long-time member of the board of the Friends of Modern and Contemporary Art at the DIA. He has many engagements in the city and organizes the open-format Conversation in the Park which he co-curates with artist Addie Langford as well as collaborations with artists and writers with whom he shares a practice of the Banquet of friends (convivial strategies), and with his students the friendship of collaborative work, thought, and celebration. These engagements with Detroit will continue as part of his appointment as Dean of Programs and Partnerships at Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Michael is the author of Logics of Separation (2011), “Néo-Stoicisme et éthique de la gloire: Le baroquisme chez Guy Debord” (2001), “Failure and Community: Preliminary Questions on the Political in the Culture of Surrealism” ( 2003), and numerous studies on the poetry of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, J.H. Prynne, Paul Celan, and the Negro Spirituals as well as essays in art writing dealing with McArthur Binion, Donald Judd, David Hammons, Arthur Jafa, Theaster Gates, Sonya Boyce, Scott Hocking, Okwui Enwezor, Rei Kawakubo, and fashion and Surrealism. His current research bears on questions concerning the ethics and politics of Care; pedagogy and transmission in the art + design school of the 21st – Century; curatorial practice; Blackness and biopolitics; the French analyst Solange Faladé; and the language of moral perfectionism in the work of Simone Weil, Guy Debord, and John Berger.

Michael has taught at Northwestern University (Art History and Comparative Literature), then English and Comparative Literature at Stonehill College, Boston, and critical practice and visual studies at CCS in Detroit. His translations from the French - Surrealism, Reverdy, Martine Broda, Blanchot - are an integral part of his conception of critical practice. With the support of a Knight Foundation grant, Michael was the founding editor of Detroit Research, devoted to a broad comprehension of visual and critical studies in choreography, ceramics, performance, post-studio art / Social Practice, and critical theory. With Addie Langford, he recently established Hors Commerce: Detroit Research Collection for the publication and free circulation of new work in critical practice. He also served as Executive Director of the Modern Ancient Brown Foundation (created by McArthur Binion) in Detroit where he set up the Core Program of Visiting Fellows and a post-bac artist residency as well as offering support to artists and institutions across Detroit and beyond (such as Black and Brown Ballet).

Michael is currently Dean of Programs and Partnerships, and Head of the Program in Critical Studies at Cranbrook Academy. Prior to his appointment at Cranbrook, he had been a Visiting Fellow in Critical Studies at Cranbrook Academy of Art, a Fellow at the Centre canadien d’architecture in Montréal, and a Fellow at the Alice Berlin Kaplan Center for the Humanities, Northwestern University. He has received a Graham Foundation Grant for his work on Guy Debord and recently received a Warhol Foundation Grant for his book in progress on Care of the City (forthcoming Sternberg Press / MIT). Living Exposure, from David Hammons to Arthur Jafa: Essays in Art Writing is also forthcoming.