Christina L. De León is Cooper Hewitt’s acting deputy director of curatorial and inaugural associate curator of Latino design. Since 2017, she has grown the museum’s collection of U.S. Latino and Latin American design, while also organizing exhibitions, public programs and bilingual digital content. In 2021, De León produced the museum’s first feature-length documentary film, Mud...
“Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial,” opening Nov. 2 at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, features 25 debut commissions that illustrate the ways design is embedded in contemporary life. Ranging from domestic objects to built environments to social systems, the exhibition considers home as an expansive framework with varying cultural and environmental contexts, and “making home” as a universal design practice. Organized in collaboration with Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, the seventh iteration of Cooper Hewitt’s Triennial series will be on view through Aug. 10, 2025.
Lean into the shifting season with this selection of autumnal objects from Cooper Hewitt’s permanent collection.
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum today announced the appointment of Elissa Black as deputy director, effective Sept. 9. Deeply experienced in both the non-profit and for-profit sectors, Black brings more than 20 years of executive leadership to the role. She has worked nationally and internationally on strategy, vision and short- and long-term planning for museums and cultural organizations, overseeing the development and implementation of dynamic cultural programming, as well as managing complex financial and administrative functions.
A look at the specific challenges and opportunities of collecting and displaying digital media.
Discover a collection of designs for stoves invented and produced by Ollivier’s Manufactory during the tumultuous period of the French Revolution.
This fall, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum will present “Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial.” Featuring 25 site-specific, newly commissioned installations, the exhibition explores design’s role in shaping the physical and emotional realities of home across the U.S., U.S. territories and tribal nations. On view Nov. 2 through summer 2025, “Making Home” is the seventh offering in the museum’s Design Triennial series, which was established in 2000 to address the most urgent topics of the time through the lens of design.
Cooper Hewitt's mount maker discusses the challenges of displaying an object with a complex surface structure.
