Previous Exhibitions

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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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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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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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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“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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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, 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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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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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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