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...
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...
Start the 2022 Year of Glass with a modern glassmaker inspired by ancient Roman models.
A collecting initiative, launched in 2020, aims to help Cooper Hewitt to acquire objects that shape and define our time.
For nearly twenty years between the two world wars, E. McKnight Kauffer, an American, was the most celebrated graphic designer in England. He was best known for his eye-catching posters, but his book covers and illustrations, graphic identities, carpets, stage sets, costumes, and ephemera were also among the most arresting of his era. Kauffer believed fervently that modern art should move beyond the walls of museums and galleries to infiltrate all elements of daily life.
This article was written by Jono Brandel, new media artist and team lead for Writing with Open Access. It is the first in a series of Design Retrospectives on the prototypes commissioned by Cooper Hewitt’s Interaction Lab as part of Activating Smithsonian Open Access in Spring of 2021. Introduction It was a series of interviews...
On October 7, 1976, Cooper Hewitt opened, joining the Smithsonian and becoming the nation’s design museum. Learn how that came to be.
Activating Smithsonian Open Access (ASOA) was born from a conversation that took place in June of 2020, while much of the world was locked down. Millions of jobs evaporated overnight, and those working in the creative and gig economies watched incomes, projects, and years of hard-won programmatic gains in the arts and humanities vanish without...
Building on the work presented in Tools and Approaches for Transforming Museum Experience, Cooper Hewitt’s Interaction Lab will offer a workshop series this fall 2021 for two separate cohorts of 20 museum practitioners and leaders across visitor experience-related disciplines who are currently working on transformative museum experience projects. The definition of a transformative museum experience...
When Salome requests a severed head on a platter, be careful what you wish for. Or write. Or draw. In 1894, Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley—both considered enfants terribles of Victorian England for their provocative work and lifestyles—produced a printed edition of Wilde’s play Salome. Wilde’s psychological centralization on the character of Salome and Beardsley’s...
Cooper Hewitt’s National Design Awards program honors innovation and impact in design. Since its inception in 2000, many Asian Americans have been recognized with a National Design Award. Here are 14 to know: Derek Lam 2019 Fashion Award Derek Lam is a leading designer of relaxed yet elevated American sportswear. His work is known for...
Written by Wahleah Johns Access to electricity is a human right, essential to people’s health, security, and livelihoods. Of the 20,000 families in the United States without access to electricity, three-quarters live on the Navajo Nation. Despite their lands providing fossil fuels that have powered the West for 50 years, these families have been left...
Written by Tatiana Schlossberg To those of us who don’t design anything, it’s easy never to think about design at all. If the design is good, then we probably don’t even see it because it’s too intuitive or easy to use or we are too distracted by the elegance or beauty to imagine that a...
Designers can find inspiration from varying forms of creative expression. Looking at the batik murals of the American artist and designer Lydia Bush-Brown (1887–1984), her sources seemed clear. Sketches capturing scenes from her travel in the 1920s to Syria and Italy can be found repeatedly in her work. Murals featuring Syrian villages on terraced hills,...
