In last month’s Cooper Hewitt Short Story, the exuberant personality of Robert Winthrop Chanler unfolded in a large gift of illustrated books to Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library. May’s Short Story celebrates the curatorial vision that brought a professional edge to the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration, that of Calvin Hathaway. Margery...
Can you explain a little bit about the type of work you do here at Cooper-Hewitt? As Senior Curator of Contemporary Design, I organize exhibitions and contribute to the museum's publications and public programs. Sometimes I come up with ideas for new exhibitions, and sometimes I'm asked to work with a team of other curators...
Can you explain a little bit about the type of work you do here at Cooper-Hewitt? I am the Assistant Curator in charge of the Wallcoverings Department, a collection of over 10,000 pieces dating from the late 17th century to the present. I am responsible for the preservation of these pieces, ongoing research, and making...
DesignBoost NYC was a two-day design conference held at Cooper-Hewitt in June 2011. Thirteen speakers specializing in everything from biomechanics to filmmaking addressed the conference’s theme, “Design Beyond Design” in this series of short talks.
During its first wave of influence, the sinuous and sensuous curves of rococo rapidly spread across France, Holland, and Germany,developing a unique personality in each location. Cooper-Hewitt invites curators Henry Hawley, Reinier Baarsen, and Wolfram Koeppe to a panel discussion that examines the diaspora of rococo during the eighteenth century, and the regional differences in...
As documents of domestic life, the watercolors featured in House Proud celebrate nineteenth-century interiors and the designers that conceived of them. Cooper-Hewitt invites contemporary designers Hermes Mallea, Carey Maloney, Mitchell Owen, and Thomas Jayne to join exhibition curator Gail Davidson for a roundtable discussion on residential interior design, historic restorations, design promotion, and the role...
Curator Ellen Lupton uses concrete examples to discuss how designed objects and environments affect human behavior. Through objects from the past and present, she demonstrates how good design can solve everyday problems.
Join Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum for a presentation and discussion on teaching graphic design with Ellen Lupton, Curator of Contemporary Design, graphic designer, educator, and author of several books on design including D.I.Y.: Design it Yourself, and D.I.Y. Kids. The presentation will offer strategies for explaining and teaching graphic design principles and ways to move...
Shoshana Berger and Grace Hawthorne, authors of Readymade: How to Make (Almost) Everything: A Do-It-Yourself Primer and Ellen Lupton, author of D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself lead a day-long celebration of “DIY” design, showing participants how to translate everyday materials into exciting new objects.
The Museum’s Current Exhibits There isn’t much there yet, as the Adobe Museum of Digital Media has not had time to include many exhibits. The easiest way to get the hang of what’s happening is to take the building tour, accessed through the directory. . The Curator of the space is Tom Eccles who introduces...
Only a few short weeks left to see Ted Muehling Selects: Lobmeyr Glass from the Permanent Collection. Watch designer Ted Muehling and curator Sarah Coffin as they discuss highlights from the exhibition in this 5 minute walkthrough: Curated by Ted Muehling, the exhibition draws from the museum’s recent acquisition of 163 rare examples of...
Members were treated to a “Curator’s Breakfast” – a preview of the IFPDA Print Fair – with Cooper-Hewitt’s Dr. Gail Davidson, Curator and Head of the Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design Department. Among the many stops, the group visited Carl Solway Gallery with printed works by John Cage, Gallerie St. Etienne for wood-cut prints, The...
Cooper-Hewitt Members enjoyed a private tour of the International Fine Art & Antique Dealers Show with Sarah Coffin, Curator of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-century Decorative Arts and Head of Product Design and Decorative Arts. Highlights of the tour included MALLET, Primavera Gallery, Lillian Nassau, Jason Jacques Gallery, H. Blairman & Sons, James Robinson, Apler-Fredericks, Hancocks &...
On Friday, September 3, 2010, Cooper-Hewitt opened “Recent Acquisitions: Digital Typography,” an installation of five graphic works exploring the evolution of post-modern type design, organized by curator Gail Davidson. In this series of blog posts, Ellen Lupton continues the conversation with brief commentary on contemporary digital typefaces. One of the pieces featured in...
On Friday, Cooper-Hewitt opens “Recent Acquisitions: Digital Typography,” a new installation of five recently acquired graphic works that explore post-modernist trends in typography. On view will be examples of lively and expressive type fonts developed by designers as a counterpoint to modernism’s rigid and impersonal sans serif type. Below, curator Gail Davidson explains the typographical...
