Second Skin is a sequel to Cooper-Hewitt’s 2002 exhibition, Skin: Surface, Substance, and Design. The new exhibition will feature products and projects produced since 2002, as well as selected pieces from the original project.
Second Skin will present examples of products, furniture, fashion, architecture, and media that are expanding the limits of the outer surface. Reflecting the convergence of natural and artificial life, the exhibition will show how enhanced and simulated skins appear throughout the contemporary environment. Designers today continually manipulate the relationship between the inside and outside of objects, garments, and buildings, creating skins that both reveal and conceal, skins that have depth, complexity, and their own behaviors and identities.