Adult Programs

In conjunction with Made in America: The Industrial Photography of Christopher Payne, join Cooper Hewitt for an illustrated talk on the critical role photography has played at MillerKnoll across the histories of both Herman Miller and Knoll. Whether documenting manufacturing processes or creating images for advertising, photographs of MillerKnoll’s furniture and textiles have shaped our understanding of American design for over seven decades. Amy Auscherman, MillerKnoll’s Director of Archives and Brand Heritage, will share how the company continues to adapt to rapid changes in labor, materials, and technology, with an eye toward the future. View full event details here.

In this session, we’ll sketch in the galleries of the Design Across Time exhibition, which explores a new thematic take on Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection. The exhibition introduces selections from our vast repository of historic and contemporary design, including significant works newly brought out of storage, recent acquisitions on public display for the first time, and canonical objects of American and global design history. View full event details here.

In this guided tour of Made in America: The Industrial Photography of Christopher Payne, photographer Christopher Payne will guide visitors through the exhibition, highlighting some of his original photographs of industrial manufacturing across the United States. From candy to pianos to humanoid robots, Payne’s photographs capture the ingenuity and diversity of products made in America, and the skilled workers who make them.   View full event details here.

Join Cooper Hewitt for a talk with Climate Action winner Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman—the latest program in a new series spotlighting the 2026 National Design Award winners in conversation with Director Maria Nicanor.  Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman lead an internationally recognized research-based design practice working along the U.S.–Mexico border. Their winning project, UCSD Community Stations, is a collaborative network of civic spaces—co-designed with local partners on both sides of the border wall—integrating cultural programming, scientific research, and community engagement to advance climate resilience and social equity.  View full event details here.

Join designer Gina Gregorio for a hands-on workshop exploring the power of repetition through collaborative block printing. Drawing inspiration from repeating patterns found throughout Cooper Hewitt’s collection, participants will use custom-made printing blocks to create dynamic patterned fabric.  View full event details here.

Join landscape architects and 2025 National Design Award winners TERREMOTO as they discuss their newly released principles of radical gardening, a practice-wide commitment to creating “omni-positive” gardens that are deeply empathetic, ecologically restorative, and thoughtfully designed to support all living things at every scale. TERREMOTO is a landscape architecture design studio with offices in Los Angeles and Berkeley California founded in 2012 with the intention of building gardens and landscapes that were explorations and investigations into ideas and culture. They create site-specific landscapes that respond to client needs while challenging historical and contemporary landscape construction methods, materials, and formal conventions. Spanning projects of diverse scales and typologies, TERREMOTO's portfolio reflects a belief that gardens can respond to the needs of all, and that this expansiveness gives rise to novel forms of beauty. Kasey Toomey and Story Wiggins from TERREMOTO will be joined by Billy Fleming, interdisciplinary scholar of climate justice and design, for a conversation about how they translate their values into practice through landscapes that embrace process-based stewardship, closed-loop systems, and care for both human and non-human communities. Together, they will explore how gardens can serve as powerful tools for imagining a radical future built and tended with love. View full event details here.

In this session, we’ll sketch in the galleries of the Design Across Time exhibition, which explores a new thematic take on Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection. The exhibition introduces selections from our vast repository of historic and contemporary design, including significant works newly brought out of storage, recent acquisitions on public display for the first time, and canonical objects of American and global design history. View full event details here.