Fact Sheet
Board Leadership
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum is pleased to announce the appointment of three new trustees to its board. The Smithsonian Institution’s board of regents voted to appoint Amita Chatterjee, Marilyn F. Friedman and Judy Francis Zankel to the board of Cooper-Hewitt.
Cooper-Hewitt’s board of trustees, led by Chairman Paul Herzan and President Jim Rosenthal, includes distinguished civic and business leaders dedicated to the continued growth of the museum.
Chatterjee is an avid art collector whose focus is primarily Asian art. She studied graphic design at the Rhode Island School of Design and was an advisor on Cooper-Hewitt’s 1985 exhibition “The Golden Eye: An International Tribute to the Artisans of India.” Chaterjee is on the board of trustees at the Brearley School and Sanskriti: An Institute for Indian Culture and is co-chair of the Friends of Asian Arts at the Asia Society.
Friedman is a design and decorative arts historian, who lectures widely on 20th-century interiors and decorative arts. A graduate of Cooper-Hewitt’s master’s program, she is the author of “Selling Good Design: Promoting the Early Modern Interior,” published by Rizzoli International in 2003. Before her career in design, Friedman was an attorney practicing in the areas of real estate and municipal finance. Friedman chairs the board of New York Service for the Handicapped and serves on the board of the Jewish Association for Services for the Aged. She is a member of Cooper-Hewitt’s Collections Committee.
Zankel is a freelance illustrator, who works as a fashion, beauty, food and instructional “howto” illustrator for manufacturers, advertising agencies, magazines and book publishers. A graduate of Hunter College, City University of New York, Zankel also attended the School of Visual Arts where she studied fashion illustration. She recently finished a term as President of the Society of Illustrators in New York, is a member of the Graphic Artists Guild and the Fashion Art Source and serves as a trustee on the board of Carnegie Hall. She is a member of Cooper-Hewitt’s Collections Committee.
