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...
Cooper-Hewitt mourns the loss of Red Burns, who was a pioneering force in shaping the interactive media world as a designer and educator. The museum was proud to honor Red with the Design Patron award last year, in recognition of her outstanding support and patronage within the design community. Burns was an arts professor and...
Sam Farber Courtesy of OXO It is with great sadness that Cooper-Hewitt mourns the loss of businessman and self-described “design junkie,” Sam Farber. The founder of the kitchenware companies Copco and OXO, Farber truly understood what design can do to improve the quality of life. He recognized that good design reflects not just aesthetic appeal,...
Niels Diffrient (1928–2013) Niels Diffrient loved many things, from airplanes to ice dancing. He loved his three children and his wife Helena Hernmarck, the internationally known tapestry artist. Encircling those close attachments was his abiding love for people. Human beings were the ultimate subject of Niels Diffrient’s world-changing career. Calling himself an “ombudsman between the...
