Author: Matthew Kennedy

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Image features two white, stylized female figures and one black, stylized male figure on purple ground, with horizontally printed black and white sans-serif text. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A Teetering Trio in a Pastel Void
Alvin Lustig designed numerous book covers for New Directions Publishing over the course of his prolific career, including several for Tennessee Williams’s plays. Lustig’s modernist designs, characterized by their dramatic simplicity, contrast with the voluptuous poetry and unapologetic melodrama of Williams’s writing. For this cover for A Streetcar Named Desire, Lustig choreographed a three-way dance...
Meet the Hewitts: Part Sixteen
In Meet the Hewitts Part 15, Au Panier Fleuri—possibly the first ever museum shop—flourished. The store sold objects created by students from the Cooper Union Women’s Art School inspired by designs in the collection of the Cooper Union Museum of the Arts of Decoration. In this snippet of “Meet the Hewitts,” we meet some students...
Meet the Hewitts: Part Fourteen
Meet the Hewitts: Part 13 traveled abroad with Sarah and Eleanor. This month, we travel back to their country estate of Ringwood Manor to take another look at the residence’s guest books. In Meet the Hewitts: Part Five and Part Eight, Margery Masinter and Sue Shutte wonderfully describe the events and country life of Ringwood Manor,...
Alternatives in Oz
Long before Wicked was the popular alternative to L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel and the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz, there was The Wiz. Subtitled “The Super Soul Musical ‘Wonderful Wizard of Oz’,” The Wiz, created by Charlie Smalls and William F. Brown, utilized the beloved characters from L. Frank Baum’s original novel,...
Cara McCarty Portrait
Meet the Staff: Cara McCarty
Can you explain a little bit about the type of work you do here at Cooper-Hewitt? As Curatorial Director, my primary responsibility is overseeing the Museum's collections and helping to shape the exhibition program. Major initiatives at the Museum are done collectively, with each division playing a role in decisions. One of the most visible...
DesignPrep: Curating Interaction Design
From cutting-edge karaoke to interactive chair mazes, students envision museum exhibitions of the future. On February 13, DesignPrep students met for their final of four sessions with Angela Chen and Erika Tarte, professional interaction and graphic designers from the firm Local Projects, to present their ideas developed over the prior three weeks. Inspired by works...
Hive Fashion
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s Hive Fashion program wrapped up its last session of the year with the twelve high school students pitching their own fashion design concepts to a jury of designers and business professionals at Roc Apparel in New York City. The students come from different high schools across the city and were selected...
Image consists of abstract New York skyscrapers dominating the center. At lower right, the American flag hangs from a building. In bold block print in light blue and white, upper right: AMERICAN / AIRLINES; in blue, lower left: TO NEW YORK; lower left, the American Airlines logo.
Getting There is Half the Fun
Or, perhaps, not actually a proportional half-and-half. Edward McKnight Kauffer’s series of posters for American Airlines focuses on the destination (such as Chicago or Niagara Falls) rather than the air travel itself. From this perspective, being there is more than half the fun. Kauffer was born in 1890 to a low-income family. His artistic inclinations,...
Give ‘Em Both Barrels by Jean Carlu
Shocked and Appealed
Well, this is certainly pugnacious—but what propaganda isn’t, really? It takes no learned scholar to discern that this poster means business. Euphemism wasn’t really of interest to the United States in December 1941, when its resistance to entering World War II was abruptly terminated by the infamous events in Pearl Harbor. The nation was catapulted...