On a digital screen floats blobs containing an eye, nose, and mouth. A seated person with long brown hair is looking at the screen. The screen is surrounded by a gold frame with long black cords / wires around it.
Face Values: Exploring Artificial Intelligence
Previously On View: Friday, September 20, 2019 to Monday, February 13, 2023

Presented in Cooper Hewitt’s Process Lab, Face Values: Exploring Artificial Intelligence is an immersive installation that explores the pervasive but often hidden role of facial-detection technology in contemporary society. This high-tech, provocative response investigates the human face as a living data source used by governments and businesses to track, measure, and monetize emotions. Using their own...

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View of exhibition space with three framed artworks on a slanted table in foreground and colorful vases in a glass vitrine in background.
Deconstructing Power: W. E. B. Du Bois at the 1900 World’s Fair
Previously On View: Friday, December 9, 2022 to Monday, May 29, 2023

Deconstructing Power: W. E. B. Du Bois at the 1900 World’s Fair places decorative arts from Cooper Hewitt’s permanent collection in dialogue with 20 innovative data visualizations that W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) created for the 1900 Paris World’s Fair to explore how design can both reveal and mask dynamics of power and equity....

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Sepia toned postcard with man sketching at drafting table with ornate fireplace in back. Top of postcard reads "Le Style Guimard"
Hector Guimard: How Paris Got Its Curves
Previously On View: Friday, November 18, 2022 to Sunday, May 21, 2023

Hector Guimard: How Paris Got Its Curves invites a new understanding of France’s most famous art nouveau architect, Hector Guimard (1867–1942). Guimard is perhaps best known for his designs for the Paris Métro stations (1898–1900) and private residences like Castel Béranger (1895–97)—both important commissions broadcasting the art nouveau style he was developing at the turn of the century. The repeated ...

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Fanciful drawings of decorative ornamental designs completed in rich watercolors
Mr. Pergolesi’s Curious Things: Ornament in 18th-Century Britain
Previously On View: Saturday, October 1, 2022 to Sunday, January 29, 2023

Mr. Pergolesi’s Curious Things: Ornament in 18th-Century Britain showcases fanciful drawings and prints by Michel Angelo Pergolesi (died 1801), an Italian-born artist whose professional specialty, in his words, was “the ornaments of the ancients.” In the early 1760s, Pergolesi moved to London, England, where he helped popularize a neoclassical style that employed ornament inspired by...

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Interior installation photograph inside a room with intricate carved molding. Objects displayed behind a series of tall folding screens.
Duro Olowu Selects: Works from the Permanent Collection
Previously On View: Friday, March 18, 2022 to Sunday, August 28, 2022

Duro Olowu Selects is the twentieth installment in Cooper Hewitt’s Selects series, which invites designers, writers, and cultural figures to explore and interpret objects in the museum’s collection. This exhibition is curated by Nigerian-British designer Duro Olowu who has received international recognition for his eponymous fashion label, textile designs, and curatorial work, which take inspiration...

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Close-up photograph of a section of objects displayed behind plexiglass in a white gallery. In the center of the glass display case is a long, horizontal-rectangular cream canvas mounted on the wall with an intricate olive-green repeating design of leaves and flowers with accents of orange and light green. Underneath is a row of silver objects placed on a clear glass shelf, including two shallow silver baskets with their handles up on the left, a silver tea urn in the shape of Atlas supporting the world in the center, and two elaborately-decorated cylindrical tea caddies on the right. On either side, also behind glass, are two recessed windows with cream blinds drawn down, in front of them are two white platforms, on each stands a golden three pronged candelabra.
Foreign Exchange: 18th-Century Design on the Move
Previously On View: Friday, January 28, 2022 to Sunday, September 25, 2022

Drawing from Cooper Hewitt’s permanent collection, this exhibition explores the unprecedented circulation of labor, skills, aesthetics, and luxury goods across international borders in the 18th century. It traces the movement of people, ideas, and objects across borders, challenging notions of foreign and domestic, community member and outcast, and national style. The desire for luxury goods...

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Black and white photograph of a group of students in a room studying different styles of textiles.
Sarah & Eleanor Hewitt: Designing a Modern Museum
Previously On View: Friday, February 4, 2022 to Sunday, October 23, 2022

Sarah & Eleanor Hewitt: Designing a Modern Museum chronicles the colorful lives and contributions of the dynamic sisters and explores how they created The Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration. Through archival photography and documents, personal drawings and correspondence, news clippings and ephemera, the exhibition introduces the sisters as educators, collectors, and philanthropists....

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View exhibitions prior to 2015 on the collection site