BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MICH.- Christopher Scoates, the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Director of Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum, announced a series of leadership changes today at both the Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum.

Gregory Wittkopp has held the dual role of Director of Cranbrook Art Museum and the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research since 2011. In order to focus his full-time attention on the Center, he will step down from his position at Cranbrook Art Museum next month.

Andrew Blauvelt, a 1988 graduate of Cranbrook Academy of Art’s Design Department, will become the new Director of Cranbrook Art Museum.

Blauvelt is currently the Senior Curator, Design, Research, and Publishing, at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minn.

“After the overwhelming success of Cranbrook Art Museum’s latest project, Nick Cave: Here Hear, Wittkopp felt the time was right to transition his energy to the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research,” said Scoates. “At the same time, the Museum is looking to build upon the success of our recent projects, and we feel that bringing in Blauvelt will help us continue to capitalize on our recent success, while using his inspired set of skills to help us prepare a roadmap for the future.”

The transition will occur at the end of September.

"I'm thrilled to return to Cranbrook at such an exciting time not only for the Art Museum and Academy of Art, but also for the city of Detroit and the region,” said Blauvelt. “I look forward to building upon the programming and collections of the Museum and working with my colleagues both on and off campus to realize new opportunities. I'm particularly delighted to be able to work in close proximity with the artists, designers, and architects at Cranbrook and look forward to being part of Detroit's vibrant arts scene and rich creative community."

Blauvelt will be joined by his partner Scott Winter, who has been named the new Director of Development of Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum. Winter comes to Cranbrook with more than 25 years of fundraising experience. He arrives from the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where he served as Development Director. Winter previously served as Director of the Annual Fund at the Walker Art Center where he managed individual giving and donor cultivation, oversaw and grew the membership program, and created the museum’s first new acquisitions fund in more than 30 years. He developed many of the museum’s signature programs such as its popular Walker After Hours and its annual summer concert, Rock the Garden, boosting museum membership, increasing earned revenue, and enhancing community engagement.

Andrew Blauvelt has served as the Senior Curator, Design, Research, and Publishing at the Walker Art Center since 2013. From 2010 to 2013, he served as the Walker’s Chief of Communications and Audience Engagement overseeing the design, marketing, public relations, education, and new media departments and the development of its online publishing initiatives, including its award-winning website and online collections research catalogue. He served as the Walker’s Design Director and Curator from 1998-2010, developing and overseeing the brand identity of the organization and organizing touring exhibitions.

For this work, in 2009, the Walker received the National Design Award for Institutional and Corporate Achievement from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the first non-profit organization to receive the honor.

A practicing graphic designer for more than 20 years, his work has received over 100 design awards, including several nominations for the Chrysler Award for Design Innovation and the National Design Awards in Communications Design.

As Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the Walker, he organized several exhibitions such as Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life (2003), an international, traveling exhibition of avant-garde architecture and design whose roots lie in the exploration of commonplace materials and daily routines and rituals; and Some Assembly Required: Contemporary Prefabricated Houses (2005), featuring eight modern modular residences in production, the first major museum survey of the subject that traveled to several venues in the United States. He also co-curated Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes (2008), the first major museum exhibition about the art and architecture of the American suburb, organized by the Walker Art Center in association with the Heinz Architectural Center at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; and Graphic Design: Now in Production (2011), the first major survey of the field in more than a decade organized with the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

His latest exhibition is Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia (2015), a major survey of countercultural art, design, and architecture, which is scheduled to open at the Walker in October, and then travel to Cranbrook Art Museum in the summer of 2016.

Prior to the Walker, Blauvelt was a design educator and visiting faculty member at graduate design programs in the United States and Europe. He was Director of Graduate Studies and Chair of the Graphic Design Department at the College of Design, North Carolina State University. He received his MFA in Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art and his BFA in Visual Communication from the Herron School of Art of Indiana University.

“We are delighted that Blauvelt and Winter will bring their unique areas of expertise to Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum, advancing the mission of the Museum to continue to offer new and exhilarating exhibitions each year,” said Dominic DiMarco, President of Cranbrook Educational Community “At the same time, we are excited to expand the awareness of Cranbrook's heritage as an international leader in art and design with new programs at the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research. With the combination of Wittkopp’s decades of institutional knowledge, and the new perspectives of Blauvelt and Winter, we are confident that Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum are poised to make great strides in the coming years.”