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Join photographer Christopher Payne, former New York Times photography editor Kathy Ryan, and bestselling author Rachel Slade for a wide-ranging conversation around Payne’s Made in America project to document industrial manufacturing across the United States. Payne’s images show a startling diversity of companies, from a pencil factory and humanoid robot maker, to a lab that makes mirrors for astronomical telescopes. The panelists will discuss why Payne was drawn to documenting sites of industrial production in America, the importance of photography as a means of conveying the diversity of things made in the U.S. and the skilled workers who make them, and the challenges and opportunities of onshoring industrial production in the 21st century. Matilda McQuaid will moderate this discussion.  

Learn more about the ASL Tour happening before this program. 

SPEAKERS 

 Matilda McQuaid (moderator) is Acting Director of Curatorial and previously Head of Textiles at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.  She oversees curatorial and exhibition programming often working collaboratively with other Smithsonian museums on projects and exhibitions.  As a curator she has organized nationally and internationally acclaimed architecture and design exhibitions with accompanying publications including “Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance” (2005), “Color Moves: Art and Fashion by Sonia Delaunay” (2011), “Tools: Extending Our Reach” (2014), and “Nature—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial” (2019).  Formerly at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC) for fifteen years where she curated over thirty exhibitions, she is also an accomplished author and editor on art, architecture, and design, with many books, exhibition catalogues and articles to her credit.   

Christopher Payne studied architecture at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania and worked as an architect for twelve years before committing full-time to photography. He is fascinated by design, assembly, and the built form. Over the past decade, through personal projects and editorial commissions, he has been on a photographic journey to learn more about what’s made here: the traditional industries that “built this country” as well as the newest and most technologically advanced processes. These images can be found in his latest book, Made In America. Payne’s work frequently appears in The New York Times Magazine and Popular Science, and in other major publications including Interview, National Geographic, Scientific American, The Atlantic, Time, and Wired, among many others. 

Kathy Ryan, the former longtime director of photography at The New York Times Magazine, has been a pioneer of combining fine art photography with photojournalism. She has worked with the world’s best photographers across all genres of photography. She regularly brought new talent into the magazine’s pages. She recently left the Times after 39 years to focus on her own artwork, curating exhibitions, teaching a course at Yale, and speaking engagements. Ryan was awarded the Dr. Erich Salomon Prize from the German Photographic Society in September 2025. Ryan won two Emmy’s for videos she produced for The New York Times Magazine’s Great Performers series. 

Rachel Slade is a journalist and author whose narrative work explores policy, labor, history, and economics. She’s written for leading publications including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Boston magazine. She is the author of the critically acclaimed bestseller Into the Raging Sea about the 2015 sinking of the American cargo ship El Faro during Hurricane Joaquin. The book was a NYT Notable Book and among NPR’s best books of the year. Her second book, Making It in America, explores the history of manufacturing and labor in the United States. She has held editorships at the Boston Globe and Boston magazine, and talk political journalism at Tufts.

AccessibiliTy & What to Expect

  • Format: The program will begin with a brief welcome, then the speakers will engage in a moderated conversation. It will end with an optional Q&A with the audience. The audience will remain seated for the program.
  • About the space: This program will take place in Cooper Hewitt’s lecture room on the ground floor of the museum. The audience seating area has seats with backs. It is fully wheelchair accessible. There is an accessible restroom on the ground floor. Read more about accessibility at Cooper Hewitt.
  • Accommodations: The program will have live CART captioning and ASL Interpretation. We welcome questions and accommodation requests that support your participation. Email us at CHEducation@si.edu or let us know when you register. Please make your request as far in advance as possible—preferably at least ten days before the program date.

 SUPPORT 

Made in America: The Industrial Photography of Christopher Payne received support from Smithsonian’s Our Shared Future: 250, a Smithsonian-wide initiative commemorating the nation’s 250th anniversary. Signature support for Smithsonian’s Our Shared Future: 250 has been provided by Lilly Endowment Inc. Additional generous contributions have been made by Target and New Balance.