In the center of the image is a medium-skin toned hand holding a cell phone. The cell phone displays two butterflies superimposed against the flower garden in the background of the image. One of the butterflies is bright blue with a slight iridescent quality, and the smaller one, a Monarch, contains various shades of orange and yellow with black veining on the wings.
Design Retrospective: ButtARfly
This article was written as part of a series of Design Retrospectives on the prototypes commissioned by Cooper Hewitt’s Interaction Lab for the Activating Smithsonian Open Access Challenge. It was co-authored by the ButtARfly team: Jonathan Lee, Project Lead and Animation Programmer; Rianne Trujillo, Web Developer; Lauren Addario, Audio Advisor and Content Developer; Miriam Langer,...
Read Time
8 minutes
Posted By
Rachel Ginsberg
Date
May 6, 2022
A glass decanter, with a bulbous bottom ascending into a narrow-necked top and a disc-like stopper, glows electric blue in a dark space.
Year of Glass: Old Glass in a New Light
An electron microscope and ultraviolet illumination can change what we know about the life of a glass object.
Read Time
5 minutes
Posted By
Sarah Barack
Date
April 21, 2022
An oval-shaped, footed glass bowl cut with intricate geometric designs and a scalloped rim.
Year of Glass: Cut vs. Pressed
How do cut glass objects differ from those created using the innovation of pressed glass and what does this have to do with celery?
Read Time
4 minutes
Posted By
Sarah Barack
Date
March 18, 2022
Image of a magazine page of the start of an article on Marion Dorn, featuring a block of text and five colorful images depicting textile designs.
Marion Dorn, Back in the USA
American designers Marion V. Dorn and E. McKnight Kauffer returned to New York in 1940 after a long, productive period working abroad in England. Their retreat, spurred by World War II, was a hasty one. Dorn, the more resilient of the pair, spent much of the 1940s re-establishing her career, even briefly designing scarves for...
Read Time
4 minutes
Posted By
Kimberly Randall
Date
March 17, 2022
Pair of covered clear glass, inverted-bell shape drinking vessels, with knopped stems, stepped circular feet, and squat dome-shaped removable lids with baluster finials. The bodies etched with scenes of female domestic life after the birth of a newborn; the lids etched with garlands.
Year of Glass: Dutch Artistry
Written by Jasmine Keegan The United Nations has designated 2022 the International Year of Glass. Cooper Hewitt is celebrating the occasion with a yearlong series of posts focused on the medium of glass and museum conservation. Dutch glass artisans reached high levels of skill in ornamentation during the 18th century, as demonstrated in these beautifully decorated...
Read Time
5 minutes
Posted By
Sarah Barack
Date
February 24, 2022
Printed fabric has a design of wheat sheaves in black against a background of orange and yellow.
The Glow of Althea McNish
Althea McNish (1924–2020) was one of the first Black women designers to receive international recognition for her achievements in design. Her textile Golden Harvest marks the beginning of a remarkable career for an under-recognized pioneer of 20th-century textile design.
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Kimberly Randall
Date
February 22, 2022
Screenshot from iOS app Planetary. "Artists are stars" reads text next to a brilliant sun. "Albums are planets" says text near a planet.
A Love Letter to Planetary
We’ve written before about Cooper Hewitt’s first acquisition of an iOS app, Planetary: first Seb Chan and Aaron Cope described their unique and unusual way of “collecting” the app in 2014, and then we wrote about why Planetary was no longer functioning in 2019. In 2020, however, software developer Kemal Enver remastered the work and...
Read Time
6 minutes
Posted By
Jessica Walthew
Date
February 16, 2022
A moonscape against a black sky with the sun and earth in the upper left and right of the image. In the foreground are six astronauts in white spacesuits, who are in various poses, mostly standing, one sitting. One of the six is climbing down from the Apollo 11 moon lander onto the moon surface. The astronauts names, "Neil, Chloe, Li, Jayden, Maria, and Ed" float above their heads.
Design Retrospective: ScienceVR Treasure Hunt
This article was written by educator and experience designer, Caitlin Krause as part of a series of Design Retrospectives on the prototypes commissioned by Cooper Hewitt’s Interaction Lab for the Activating Smithsonian Open Access Challenge. When ScienceVR co-founders Yen-Ling Kuo, Jackie Lee, and I began to approach the design process for the Activating Smithsonian Open...
Read Time
10 minutes
Posted By
Rachel Ginsberg
Date
February 9, 2022
Free-blown glass vase with pale blue, purple, and gold-toned iridescent body, its shape is a depressed sphere with a squarish opening that has a turned-down rim. Three irregular thick ribs line the sides diminishing to points at the base.
Year of Glass: Imitating the Ancient
Start the 2022 Year of Glass with a modern glassmaker inspired by ancient Roman models.
Read Time
4 minutes
Posted By
Sarah Barack
Date
January 21, 2022