Build your design toolkit! Design Practice is a series of free, drop-in workshops for high school students exploring techniques, strategies, and careers in design. No prior experience required—just bring yourself and a creative mindset. This month, join us for a workshop with designer Liam Lee, whose work is featured in our current exhibition Making Home. Get inspired by Lee’s needle felting skills and learn how to create your very own needle-felted patch to add to a beanie. All materials are included!
Session two of the inaugural Making Home Saturday Series features Chief of the Delaware Tribe of Indians Brad KillsCrow, Maria Nicanor, Director of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and Kevin Young, Director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The session will explore the central role that community and organizational leaders play in reflecting a multiplicity of identities and concerns as a means of cultivating belonging and reshaping an understanding of home. The conversation will be moderated by architect, designer, and scholar Mabel O. Wilson.
In celebration of the opening of Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial, join Cooper Hewitt for session one of the inaugural Making Home Saturday Series program. Curators Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, Christina L. De León, and Michelle Joan Wilkinson will introduce the exhibition’s themes, participants, and development, and explore how the exhibition’s diverse contemporary perspectives and approaches to home across the United States, U.S. Territories, and Tribal Nations create a greater understanding of how design impacts this country, its value systems, and landscapes.
You’re invited to the return of Behind the Book Design, a members-only, behind-the-scenes look into the design and production of publications for our biggest exhibitions. Join Cooper Hewitt collaborators Sunny Park, Gary Fogelson, Ryan Waller, and Ellen Lupton as they share insights into their design process. An open discussion and Q&A will follow with Pamela...
Deanna Van Buren, architect and founder of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, will discuss the installation "Architecture of Reentry" in the exhibition Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial. Designing Justice + Designing Spaces is a design, architecture, and real-estate enterprise working to end mass incarceration and advocating for restorative justice solutions through the built environment. The “Architecture of Reentry” proposes Mobile Refuge Rooms as a prototype for private, customizable transitional housing for people returning from carceral spaces.
In this curator-guided tour of Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial, visitors will explore some of the exhibition’s 25 original commissions, highlighting design’s role in shaping the physical and emotional experiences of home across the United States, US Territories, and Tribal Nations. The exhibition is the seventh offering in the museum’s Design Triennial series, which was established...
How can we apply anti-waste strategies to an unrelentingly industrialized future? Join MI Leggett, Founder and Creative Director of Official Rebrand, and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum for a discussion on past, present, and future perspectives on waste and sustainability in design and beyond. This workshop is designed for educators eager to explore ways to support sustainable habits in their students and classrooms.
Experience Cooper Hewitt’s collection and exhibitions through drawing! In this session, we'll sketch in the galleries of Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial, which explores design’s role in shaping the physical and emotional experiences of home across the United States, US Territories, and Tribal Nations. The exhibition is the seventh offering in the museum’s Design Triennial series, which was established in 2000 to address the most urgent topics of the time through the lens of design. This exhibition is full of visual imagery to spark the imagination for sketching!
For the third event in the lecture series, Making Home with History, multidisciplinary artist La Vaughn Belle and architect Germane Barnes will discuss cultural and environmental heritage in relation to their ongoing work and Triennial commissions. Both Belle and Barnes investigate Afro-diasporic social and historical narratives influencing contemporary art, architecture and design.
In this curator-guided tour of Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial, visitors will explore some of the exhibition’s 25 original commissions, highlighting design’s role in shaping the physical and emotional experiences of home across the United States, US Territories, and Tribal Nations. The exhibition is the seventh offering in the museum’s Design Triennial series, which was established...
In this curator-guided tour of Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial, visitors will explore some of the exhibition’s 25 original commissions, highlighting design’s role in shaping the physical and emotional experiences of home across the United States, US Territories, and Tribal Nations. The exhibition is the seventh offering in the museum’s Design Triennial series, which was established...
Design Hive is a paid, youth-led initiative at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. High school juniors and seniors dive deep into design objects and processes to develop their own collaborative projects. Along the way, they will learn how designers move from an initial idea to final design!
This year, Design Hive will focus on how designers think about home — from building home and creating safer spaces to issues around housing and migration. We are looking for aspiring architects, city planners, activists, and more to join our cohort this year.
For the inaugural Design Index, artist Megumi Shauna Arai has been researching various aspects of her current work, including silk, ornament, pleating and draping. During the program, the materials Arai has been studying and referencing during the last three months at the library will be on view, highlighting her current index of research, inspiration, and interests.
In this curator-guided tour of Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial, visitors will explore some of the exhibition’s 25 original commissions, highlighting design’s role in shaping the physical and emotional experiences of home across the United States, US Territories, and Tribal Nations. The exhibition is the seventh offering in the museum’s Design Triennial series, which was established...
