Featuring 25 site-specific, newly commissioned installations, Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial explores design’s role in shaping the physical and emotional realities 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...

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Es Devlin, a white woman with dark hair wearing a vibrant red jumpsuit, appears miniscule in the center of a gray and white sphere with swooping gray arches and city skylines. The images on the sphere are mirrored, as is Es herself; a reflection of her extends upside down from beneath her feet.
An Atlas of Es Devlin

An Atlas of Es Devlin is the first monographic museum exhibition dedicated to British artist and stage designer Es Devlin (born 1971), who is renowned for work that transforms audiences. Since beginning in small theaters in 1995, she has charted a course from kinetic stage designs at the National Theatre and the Metropolitan Opera to...

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People sit working at large textile looms in front of a high wall of shelves filled to the brim with vibrant and colorful yarn and other kinds of thread; another person stands and watches their work.
A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes

American textile designer, weaver, and color authority Dorothy Liebes (1897–1972) had a profound influence across design fields, helping to shape American tastes in areas from interiors and transportation to industrial design, fashion, and film. The “Liebes Look”—which combined vivid color, lush texture, and often a glint of metallic—became inextricably linked with the American modern aesthetic....

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Three photos in a collage: From left, a young boy in a bright red shirt and black shorts and a teenage girl in a pink shirt and floral pants are seen riding a hot pink teeter totter on one side of a tall, rusty wall. Families crowd around the area observing the action and taking photos; top right photo shows clear plastic orbs filled with messages, which are being handled by men in camouflage attire; bottom right photo shows a large street installation reading in bright yellow, all caps "ACT NOW" and a symbol in the foreground. A group of people carrying flags and banners is visible in the distance.
Designing Peace

What would be possible if we were to design for peace? Designing Peace explores the unique role design can play in pursuing peace. Visitors will encounter a wide range of design responses from around the world that look at ways to create and sustain a more durable peace, and will be encouraged to consider their own agency in...

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A WilliWear showroom. In an urban / industrial gray warehouse space, garments are suspended not from clothing racks but from chain link fence that lines the wall. The garments are simple blouses and pants. In the background, two models, one woman and one man, look at each other like they're sizing each other up
Willi Smith: Street Couture

During his twenty-year career Willi Smith (1948–1987) united fashion and American culture, marrying affordable, adaptable basics with avant-garde performance, film, art, and design. Smith hoped to solve what he called “the problem of getting dressed,” or the lack of control fashion afforded the everyday person, by using clothing as a tool for the liberation of...

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