Installation view of Moustiers Ceramics exhibition
Moustiers Ceramics: Gifts from the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Collection
Previously On View: Wednesday, August 2, 2017 to Monday, May 27, 2019

Moustiers Ceramics: Gifts from the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Collection highlights the decorative and broad impact of innovative patterning and variety of forms produced in tin-glazed earthenware in Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, France during the 18th century. When King Louis XIV issued a series of edicts requiring French nobility to melt their silver table services to fund French war...

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Installation of Esperanza Spalding Selects in the Nancy Marks Gallery
Esperanza Spalding Selects
Previously On View: Friday, June 9, 2017 to Sunday, January 21, 2018

Esperanza Spalding Selects is the 15th installation of Cooper Hewitt’s Selects exhibition series in which designers, artists, architects, and public figures are invited to examine and interpret the museum’s collection of more than 210,000 objects. Musician and four-time Grammy Award-winner Esperanza Spalding creates thought-provoking juxtapositions of collection objects to show how material evolves into different forms as new designers adapt ...

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Making | Breaking: New Arrivals
Previously On View: Friday, May 19, 2017 to Sunday, November 19, 2017

Pushing the boundaries of materials, making, and form, 43 recently acquired  design objects  are installed in the museum’s Process Galleries, along with documentation of the designers’ creative process. The working sketches, prototypes, and videos featured in the exhibition elucidate the making of these objects and demonstrate how technology such as 3-D printing enables the fabrication of impossibly...

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Visitors in the museum's Process Lab.
Process Lab: Citizen Design
Previously On View: Friday, September 30, 2016 to Sunday, September 24, 2017

An installation in the museum’s Process Lab, Citizen Design invites visitors to engage, empathize, and help envision a better America. Inspired by the Gray Area project, a Philadelphia-based community engagement initiative featured in the exhibition By the People: Designing a Better America (which ran from September 30, 2016 to February 26, 2017), Citizen Design encourages civic dialogue at...

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The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s
Previously On View: Friday, April 7, 2017 to Sunday, August 20, 2017

“A multisensory blockbuster of a show…” —Associated Press The first major museum exhibition to focus on American taste during the creative explosion of the 1920s, The Jazz Age is a multi-media experience of more than 400 examples of interior design, industrial design, decorative art, jewelry, fashion, and architecture, as well as related music and film. Giving...

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The World of Radio
Previously On View: Friday, February 3, 2017 to Sunday, September 24, 2017

A Depression-era, monumental batik mural entitled The World of Radio is the focus of this exhibition of iconic radios, radio design drawings, and photographs from the early twentieth century through  the present day. Designed by Arthur Gordon Smith, the mural celebrates the career of Jessica Dragonette, one of radio’s most popular personalities of the 1930s. On view for the...

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COOPER HEWITT IN LONDON
Previously On View: Wednesday, September 7, 2016 to Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and its groundbreaking creative technologies will represent the United States at the first London Design Biennale. The Biennale will take place in the heart of London at Somerset House, a center for the arts and culture. More than 35 countries from six continents will present new installations and commissioned works on the theme of Utopia ...

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BY THE PEOPLE: DESIGNING A BETTER AMERICA
Previously On View: Friday, September 30, 2016 to Sunday, February 26, 2017

An exhibition of 60 collaborative designs from throughout the United States and across borders, By the People challenges the country’s persistent social and economic inequality. Curator of Socially Responsible Design Cynthia E. Smith conducted over two years of field research—traveling to shrinking post-industrial cities, sprawling metro regions, struggling rural towns, areas impacted by natural and...

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Scraps: Fashion, Textiles, and Creative Reuse
Previously On View: Friday, September 23, 2016 to Sunday, April 23, 2017

Offering creative, alternative approaches to confronting textile waste, Scraps: Fashion, Textiles, and Creative Reuse presents the work of three designers who put sustainability at the heart of the design process: Luisa Cevese, founder of Riedzioni in Milan; Christina Kim, founder of dosa, inc., in Los Angeles; and Reiko Sudo, managing director at NUNO in Tokyo....

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View exhibitions prior to 2015 on the collection site