Table Of Content
Cooper Hewitt exhibitions regularly travel across the country and the world. Founded in 1897, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum has been part of the Smithsonian since 1967. The museum’s dynamic, innovative exhibitions, education programs, master’s program, publications and online resources inspire, educate and empower people through design.
Plan Your Visit
An Atlas of Es Devlin, the first monograph on Devlin’s genre-defying practice, is an experiential publication encompassing art, activism, theater, poetry, music, dance, opera, and sculpture. After receiving funds from Smithson, the US government established the Smithsonian Institution for the diffusion of knowledge and the development of a national identity in the 19th century. Guest curator Rebeca Méndez considers how culture, design, technology, and the natural world have converged throughout history.
The Cooper Union Museum for The Arts of Decoration
Enhance your visit to Cooper Hewitt with our Digital Guide on Bloomberg Connects, the free arts and culture app. Delve deeper into the museum’s history and learn more about the exhibitions currently on view. In 1895, Peter Cooper's granddaughters, Eleanor Garnier Hewitt, Sarah Cooper Hewitt, and Amy Hewitt Green, asked the trustees of the Cooper Union for room in which to install a Museum for the Arts of Decoration, modeled after the Musée des Artes Décoratifs of Paris, France. The purpose of the museum was to provide the art students of Cooper Union, other students of design, and working designers with study collections of the decorative arts. The trustees assigned the fourth floor of the Cooper Union's Foundation Building to the sisters, and the museum was opened to the public in 1897.
The museum
Curating Give Me a Sign: Behind-the-Scenes at Cooper Hewitt - Pratt News
Curating Give Me a Sign: Behind-the-Scenes at Cooper Hewitt.
Posted: Thu, 28 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]
An Atlas of Es Devlin is the first monographic museum exhibition dedicated to British artist and stage designer Es Devlin (born 1971), who is renowned for work that transforms audiences. Since beginning in small theaters in 1995, she has charted a course from kinetic stage designs at the National Theatre and the Metropolitan Opera to installations at major institutions, including the World Expo, Lincoln Center, and the United Nations headquarters. Her sculptures for Olympic Ceremonies, NFL Super Bowl halftime shows, and stadium tours for The Weeknd and U2 frame narratives that feel personal at a monumental scale. Over the past decade, she has adapted her craft to address climate and civilizational crises. Her public installations on endangered species and languages have inspired audiences to reimagine their connections to each other and to the planet.
Related Collections
A year-round program of lectures, conversations, and hands-on workshops provide access to the world’s leading design minds and engages design lovers of all ages in the design process. The museum’s annual National Design Awards is its largest and most visible education initiative. Honoring excellence, innovation, and lasting achievements in American design, the Awards are bestowed every fall at a gala dinner and ceremony in the museum’s Arthur Ross Terrace and Garden during National Design Week. Held in conjunction with the Awards, National Design Week celebrates design’s impact on all aspects of daily life. Free public programs for all ages are offered at the museum based on the vision and work of National Design Award winners, and organizations and institutions across the country host events in recognition of the importance of design. The mansion was designed by the architectural firm of Babb, Cook & Willard in the style of a Georgian country house.
Please wash and sanitize hands frequently during your visit and practice good hygiene. Tickets are not required to visit the Arthur Ross Terrace and Garden, the museum cafe, and SHOP Cooper Hewitt.
EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS
Interested in the relationship between humans and nature, she has invented a special technique to record the falling of raindrops on textiles and porcelain. Explore women in design below through individual designers, design disciplines, and Cooper Hewitt’s past exhibitions. In the dynamic and interactive Process Lab, you can brainstorm design solutions through hands-on and digital activities. The Process Lab emphasizes how design is a way of thinking, planning and problem solving, and provide a foundation for the rest of the design concepts on view in the museum.
In 1996, Rebeca Méndez (Mexican-American, born 1962) opened her eponymous studio, specializing in film and video installations for cultural programs and institutions, collaborations with architects on interior commissions, photography, book design, and public art. Her practice embodies experimentation, collaboration, and creative integrity. “Play designer” on 4K resolution touchscreen tables, developed by Ideum, that feature specialized interactive software designed by Local Projects. The 84-, 55-, and 32-inch tables use projected capacitive touch technology – the same technology found in popular tablets and smart phones.
In this collection
Trained in Germany, Margarethe Fröhlich (Austrian, 1901–1977) worked as an interior designer and model maker in Prague, Czech Republic, until she was displaced by the Nazi regime. Settling in New York City, Fröhlich produced models for designers such as Raymond Loewy before moving on to design education at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College and the Waldorf School. Another screen on the second floor reveals the history of the Carnegie Mansion before it became the Cooper Hewitt. You can navigate the Mansion History application using the original floor plan of the building and browse through architectural details, original fittings and fixtures, and the quirks of the mansion’s original residents.
The ultra-high-definition resolution allows you to zoom in on objects to see minute details like never before. Interactive galleries where visitors explore the collection digitally and engage in the design process; an Immersion Room where visitors can discover Cooper Hewitt’s wallcoverings as they were intended to be viewed. Launched at the White House in 2000, the awards program recognizes design innovation and impact in 10 categories, celebrating design as a vital humanistic tool with the power to change the world. The awards are accompanied by a slew of programming, which highlight the work of the winners. This educational initiative makes great design widely accessible to the public through interactive events and programs for all audiences. The 25th anniversary of the National Design Awards will be celebrated in spring 2025.
Inspired by Paris's Musée des Arts Décoratifs and London's Victoria & Albert Museum, the sisters sought to elevate the status of the decorative arts in America, and traveled across Europe collecting examples of exceptional artistic or technical merit to bring back for exhibition. From block prints to birdcages, the collection was eclectic from the start, embracing almost everything as design and establishing a method for a museum that today exhibits a 3D-printed prosthetic limb next to Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch. All this technology, supported and complemented by the Cooper Hewitt's new website and digital collections, affords a deeper understanding and appreciation of the more than 200,000 objects in the museum's collection. But the greatest object in the collection is the building, and it is best understood and appreciated simply by visiting.
Following Sarah's death in 1930, the trustees of the Cooper Union appointed a board of four directors, with Constance P. Hare as chair, to administer the Museum. When Edwin S. Burdell became director of the Cooper Union in 1938, the museum was made part of his administrative responsibility, the board of directors was abolished, and an advisory council on the museum, responsible for matters relating to the museum's collections, was established. To mark the occasion of Cooper Hewitt’s reopening in 2014, the museum published an expansive book based on its unparalleled collection. Designed by Irma Boom, Making Design features more than 1,100 collection objects, which are organized entirely by Boom’s visual sequencing of images; her design and the curators’ essays weave parallel narratives throughout the book. Active primarily in Paris, France, Sonia Delaunay (Ukrainian, 1885–1979) was a modern artist and designer who merged art and everyday life. Along with her husband Robert Delaunay, she developed a theory for the vibration of contrasting colors when they are placed side by side.
Despite spanning centuries and styles these groupings of disparate objects coalesce with surprising grace, provoking visitors to really think about just what design is. These are only two of many such moments realized by the thoughtful curators and designers behind the newly reopened, revamped and reinvigorated Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. The national design collection, which has been part of the Smithsonian since 1967, is a living one that continues to grow and change as new works and ideas that define our times are added. What design meant in the late 19th century when Cooper Hewitt’s collection was started is not what design means now. Once rooted in aspirational decorative arts ideals, the criteria for acquisition are now more expansive and aim to better represent previously unexplored areas. As a result, the collection showcases aesthetic values and mastery of technique, but also speaks to the importance of socially responsible practices, racial and social justice, and the impact of the digital era and the climate crisis in our lives.
The exhibition features more than 150 works, including objects that represent the museum’s collecting legacy, as well as works brought into the collection since 2017. Many people contributed to the creation of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in its various forms throughout history. From a decorative arts collection to an industrialist’s uptown mansion to a generous gift from a stranger across the Atlantic, each story has helped shape the nation’s design museum and a global conversation about design.
A student of European craft, Trude Guermonprez (German, 1910–1979) played an important role in the American fiber arts movement, particularly during her tenure at the California College of Arts and Crafts. An influential educator, Guermonprez’s Bauhaus-influenced textiles greatly contributed to the development of modernism. Sheila Hicks (American, born 1934) is one of the most important contemporary textile artists of the 20th and 21st century. After receiving an MFA degree from the Yale School of Art under the tutelage of Josef Albers, Hicks was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to paint in Chile, where she learned to weave from local weavers, beginning her investigation into fiber as an artistic medium that continues today.
Accomplished weaver Dorothy Wright Liebes (American, 1897–1972) is often credited as a vital part of the California Modernist movement, and was once one of the most well-known designers in the United States. Liebes was a sharp businesswoman who believed mass-produced textiles could reach wider audiences while retaining a handwoven appearance. Visit our Getting Here page for more information on public transportation and parking near the museum. For accessible entrance, please inquire with staff at the 2 East 91st Street entrance.
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