What’s On

In this curator guided tour of Give Me a Sign: The Language of Symbols, visitors will discover the stories behind symbols from the STOP sign to the laugh-cry emoji and learn about how symbols play a critical and ubiquitous role in everyday life. As communication tools designed to break language barriers, symbols instruct, protect, entertain,... View full event details here.

In celebration of her first monographic exhibition, An Atlas of Es Devlin, join artist and stage designer Es Devlin in conversation with Dario Calmese, founder of the Institute for Black Imagination. Together they will explore imagination, memory, and what it means to lead a creative life. Exhibition curator Andrea Lipps will introduce the program. View full event details here.

Join Cooper Hewitt for a sensory-friendly morning before the museum opens to the general public! Gotta collect them all! Explore the exhibition Acquired! Shaping the National Design Collection with a scavenger hunt. Then, drop in for a design activity: What do you collect? Whether it’s shells, stickers, stamps, Pokémon cards, or sneakers, design a way to display your favorites. Take your design home and showcase your collection! View full event details here.

Gotta collect them all! Explore the exhibition Acquired! Shaping the National Design Collection with a scavenger hunt. Then, drop in for a design activity: What do you collect? Whether it’s shells, stickers, stamps, Pokémon cards, or sneakers, design a way to display your favorites. Take your design home and showcase your collection! View full event details here.

Join us for an original dance performance by writer and dancer Jerron Herman, in which he will engage and respond to the historic Carnegie Mansion, Cooper Hewitt’s home. The performance will travel through several galleries on the first floor of the museum and attendees will be encouraged to interact with the performance piece by writing on the performer’s garment, designed by fashion designer Sughanda Gupta. Soundscape design by composer and vocalist Molly Joyce. View full event details here.

Cooper Hewitt’s Give Me A Sign exhibition explores the history of graphic symbols as documented by industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss in his Symbol Sourcebook: An Authoritative Guide to International Graphic Symbols (1972). This program expands upon the symbol lexicon covered in the Symbol Sourcebook to include tactile symbols, used by people who are blind or have low vision, as well as people with other complex disabilities. Like their 2D counterparts, these symbols quickly convey important information, and they are often developed through collaborative and iterative design processes.  View full event details here.

Join us for a studio visit to Atlason, a New York City-based design firm and winner of the 2023 National Design Award for Product Design. Atlason is a strategic innovation and industrial design studio founded in 2004 by Hlynur Vagn Atlason. The studio designs consumer products, furniture, and packaging for a range of companies. Their recent designs include a completely recyclable and compostable packaging system for shipping plants, a lounge chair for healthcare settings that resists microbial growth, and an ergonomic refillable razor. View full event details here.