Milton Glaser (1929–2020) was a giant figure in the history of graphic design. Born in the Bronx to immigrants from Hungary, Glaser graduated in 1951 from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, where he and other students received full-tuition scholarships from the endowment established by Peter Cooper. Glaser also studied in...
Author: Ellen Lupton Ralph Caplan (1925–2020) was a writer and thinker. His 1982 book By Design: Why There Are No Locks on the Bathroom Doors in the Hotel Louis XIV, and Other Object Lessons appeared at a time when few people were addressing the everyday impact of design. His 2005 book Cracking the Whip is...
Designer Wes Wilson, who died on January 24, 2020, at age 82, created some of the most memorable posters of the psychedelic era. These wavy-gravy, acid-colored, hand-lettered provocations for the eye accompanied rock shows at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium and Avalon Ballroom. Wilson’s posters for the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, The Association, and other bands...
This tribute to Dianne Pilgrim was composed by Ellen Lupton. The world of design has lost a great friend with the passing of Dianne Pilgrim (1941–2019), director emeritus of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. When Pilgrim joined the museum as director in 1988, she brought her deep scholarly knowledge of American design as well as...
Barbara A. Mandel, 1925–2019 Cooper Hewitt Trustee 1997-2019 The Board of Trustees and staff of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum deeply mourn the passing of our beloved friend and exceptional former Board Chair Barbara Mandel. Forthright, fiercely intelligent, and a champion of design education, Barbara served Cooper Hewitt from 1997-2019, first as chair of its...
Author: Cara McCarty, Director of Curatorial Playful, humorous, poetic, and humble are not words typically associated with lighting design. It is considered a serious discipline. But the work of the prolific German lighting designer Ingo Maurer, who sadly passed this week, is just that. His endless fascination with the “magical and mystical” qualities of light...
TRIBUTE Author: Ellen Lupton, Senior curator of contemporary Design Wim Crouwel (Dutch, 1928–2019) was a giant figure in the history of graphic design. This tall, elegant man produced an astonishing body of work that is at once functional and experimental, objective and personal. His contribution has special importance for museums. A pioneer of graphic identity,...
Architect, designer, design theorist, critic, and journalist—all describe Alessandro Mendini, who died on February 18 at the age of 87. One of the key figures in modern Italian design, he was particularly known for his writings and contributions to the radical design and postmodern movements of the 1970s and 80s. After graduating in 1959 with a...
Cooper Hewitt remembers industrial designer and educator Charles Harrison, winner of the 2008 National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement, who passed away on November 29 at the age of 87. A prolific designer, Harrison created hundreds of pleasing, easy-to-use household products during his 32-year career with the retail giant Sears, Roebuck and Company. According to...
The celebrated American designer Wendell Castle was known as the "father of the art furniture movement."
Ivan Chermayeff (June 6, 1932 – December 2, 2017) was a brilliant designer, a gifted artist, and the purveyor of a unique visual language. Launching his career at a time when modern graphic design was just taking flight, he quickly became one of the field’s most influential voices. Born in London in 1932, he moved...
Cooper Hewitt mourns the loss of Vladimir Kagan, whose life-embracing style was like that of his furniture. Most examples contain the sensuous and organic forms that reflected his personality, he rephrased his work from the late 1940s to a large outburst of productivity in the 1960s and 70s to a revival of his popularity in...
Cooper Hewitt mourns the loss of Zaha Hadid, the Iraqi-British architect and designer whose dynamically shaped, sculptural buildings and conceptual projects have given life to thought-provoking forms and discussions. Winner of the Pritzker Prize in 2004, she opened new terrain as a woman designing in all parts of the globe. From China to Baku, Rome...
Michael Graves, who passed away last week at the age of 80, was one of our country’s most important architects, teachers, and designers. Over the course of a career that spanned a half century, Graves designed more than 350 buildings worldwide, taught countless students, and brought good design into homes across the country. As an...
From the moment Massimo Vignelli started his career in Italy in the mid-1950s, he forged a rigorous philosophy that transformed the international language of design for print, products, and environments. Over the decades, debates about design’s cultural function bubbled and boiled around him. Confronting the upheavals of Pop, post-modernism, deconstruction, and the digital age, Massimo...
