A collecting initiative, launched in 2020, aims to help Cooper Hewitt to acquire objects that shape and define our time.
This interactive experience explores how 17 guests of Hong Kong’s Metropole hotel contracted the SARS virus on February 21, 2003. Matt Adams, Ju Row Farr, and Nick Tandavanitj are founders of the digital art collective Blast Theory. They conceived this piece in 2018 when they were artists-in-residence at the World Health Organization in Geneva. Their...
Fighting disease with masks and protective clothing is an ancient practice. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered shortages in personal protective equipment (PPE) around the world. In spring 2020, PPE was especially scarce throughout the United States in nursing homes, prisons, and care facilities for people with disabilities. Individuals came together to create face coverings for neighbors...
The phrase “social distance” became common lingo early in the COVID-19 pandemic. To safely shop, work, or wait in line, people were advised to stay six feet (or two meters) apart. Graphic markers guided this new behavior. Solutions ranged from elaborate installations to hand-made solutions. Content from the exhibition Design and Healing: Creative Responses to...
![An eye-catching poster of a cartoon-like worker holding a bin of tomatoes and the words [WORKERS FIRST] printed in bubble font repeating vertically in wavy lines filling the background.](https://www.cooperhewitt.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/s-e-3515-Workers-First_Brian-Herrera-1.jpg)
Structural racism is a silent killer. Many conditions of daily life affect people’s health, including access to transportation, education, safe housing, nutritious food, clean air and water, and green space. Economic policies in the United States have routinely confined people of color in neighborhoods lacking these essential resources. Pandemics, from cholera in the early 1900s...
During the COVID-19 pandemic, mutual aid organizations around the world delivered food to neighbors in need, ran errands for housebound people, and created masks and other protective equipment. Many of these loosely organized groups relied on social media and tools like Google Docs to organize volunteers. Content from the exhibition Design and Healing: Creative Responses...
In 1882, Robert Koch (German, 1843–1910) discovered the bacteria that causes tuberculosis. At the time, one in seven people in Europe and the United States died of tuberculosis. People living in poverty were especially vulnerable. Sunlight and fresh air were common treatments for tuberculosis until 1943, when antibiotics were proven to cure the disease. Sanatoriums,...
To design the Paimio Sanatorium, Alvar and Aino Aalto leveraged the best science available at the time, which called for cross-ventilation and heliotherapy (exposure to sunshine) to treat and prevent tuberculosis. They considered everything from chairs and sinks to closets and beds. Sinks with angled basins were designed to minimize the sound of splashing water....
