lgbtqia+

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Image features a rectangular textile with a pattern in brown, rose, and blush. Against a rose background, a series of photographs are silkscreened overlapping each other and at an array of angles. The photographs are of children and street scenes in Cambodia. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Photographic Assemblage
In celebration of World Pride, June Object of the Day posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection. Clark Robertson moved to New York City, from Texas, in the late 1970s to establish a design and printing business, at which he started producing printed textiles for fashion and interior design use. A design titled...
Image features a faun reclining in the grass, seen from behind. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A Canticle of Pan
In celebration of World Pride, June Object of the Day posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and designs in the collection. In a 1916 profile published in Vanity Fair, Paul Thévenaz was described as a painter and a dancer. The article also identified the Swiss-born double threat as the cult leader of a movement called Rhythmician, an...
Image features a small white plastic table molded in the shape of the continental United States. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
When Form Follows Symbolic Meaning
In celebration of World Pride, June Object of the Day posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection. Best known today for his graphic design, Dan Friedman was also an educator and writer who tirelessly explored and experimented in many other design disciplines. In the late 1960s, Friedman studied graphic design in Germany and...
Image features Andy Warhol's iconic Cow wallpaper with a large salmon-colored cow head on a blue background. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Deja Moo
In celebration of World Pride, June Object of the Day posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection. I would have to give the honor of the most iconic wallpaper to Andy Warhol for his creation of Cow wallpaper. Cow was first shown at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York in 1966, which...
Image features a light orange book cover showing the title, GEEK LOVE, in black hand-lettered capital letters at top, the words overlapping their mirrored images in dark orange. Printed below the title, in black capital letters: A NOVEL / KATHERINE DUNN. At the left edge, hand-lettered text repeats the title and author's name on the spine. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Book Geek
In celebration of World Pride, June Object of the Day posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection. What does it take to design a great book cover? An avid taste for literature surely helps, and so does an eccentric eye for images and type. Chip Kidd (American, b. 1964) has designed some of...
Image features a sepia-tinted photograph of a woman in a long gown standing before a mirrored wall in an elaborate room, a gilded and upholstered side chair to her left and armchair to her right. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A Living Factory of Chic
In celebration of World Pride, June Object of the Day posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection. A woman of nearly seventy-five, dressed in a voluminous white gown with contrasting shawl, gazes over a well-appointed interior in a photograph by a thirty-five-year-old aesthete. The woman is Elsie de Wolfe, the interior is of...
Image features poster showing a blue condom in clear packaging on a white background, above the message, "Put on your thinking cap." Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Smarter, Not Harder
In celebration of World Pride, June Object of the Day posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection. In the wake of the AIDS epidemic that arose in the 1980s, greatly impacting the gay community, numerous healthcare organizations sprang up to take charge in the care and support of individuals infected by and living...
Image features a rustic wallpaper design containing a haphazard arrangement of twigs. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
All Sticks, No Stones
In celebration of World Pride, June Object of the Day posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection. Kennebec is a fun, playful wallpaper pattern that would hang unobtrusively on the wall, adding a bit of color and texture to the room. The design is rustic in nature, given that it has the appearance...
Image features two white, stylized female figures and one black, stylized male figure on purple ground, with horizontally printed black and white sans-serif text. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A Teetering Trio in a Pastel Void
In celebration of World Pride, June Object of the Day posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection. Today’s blog post was originally published on May 22nd, 2016. Alvin Lustig designed numerous book covers for New Directions Publishing over the course of his prolific career, including several for Tennessee Williams’s plays. Lustig’s modernist designs,...
Image shows a page spread from the pop-up book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. On a colorful ground, an arch of playing cards looms over a small girl with blonde hair in a purple-blue dress. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Paper, Glue, and Wonder
In celebration of World Pride, June Object of the Day posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection. This post has been excerpted and adapted from “Celebrating Pride Month with Paper Engineers,” originally published on Unbound, the blog of Smithsonian Libraries. The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library includes more than 2,000 pop-up and movable books dating from the sixteenth century to the present day—one of...
Image shows a repeating pattern of dots that scale from small to large and back to small, printed in two columns. Please scroll down for further information on this piece.
Dot Those Walls
In celebration of World Pride, June Object of the Day posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection. Infinity is a pattern of dots that scale from small to large back to small, printed in two columns across the width. When seen from a distance the design is slightly reminiscent of crocodile hide. I...
A photograph of a large brick and stone building that is set against a blue sky and a field of green grass stretched before it. Hung from the middle of the building is a rectangular rainbow flag, composed of six stripes of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. People congregate in small groups on the grass.
The Rainbow Flag @ Cooper Hewitt
The LGBTQIA+ Pride flag, often referred to as the rainbow flag, symbolizes the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community. The design was originally conceived in 1978 by artist and activist Gilbert Baker (American, 1951–2017) and fabricated with Baker’s friends and fellow artists at the Gay Community Center in San Francisco, California. Directly inspired by...
Image features a square poster printed in black and white on a blue background, showing a circle within a ring. The circle contains the image of an eye, with the following text in the pupil: WAC women's action coalition. The black ring contains text in white: WAC IS WATCHING WOMEN TAKE ACTION. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Women’s Action is Women’s Power
In celebration of World Pride, June Object of the Day posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection. This post originally appeared  on June 15, 2015. Founded in 1992, the Women’s Action Coalition (WAC) staged public demonstrations or “actions” to raise the visibility of women in art, culture, and society. The organization was founded in response to the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill congressional hearings, which riveted...
Image features a gold-toned ring with the capital letters L and O (on angle), stacked over the letters V and E, spelling out the word love. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
L-O-V-E
In celebration of World Pride, June Object of the Day posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection. This gilded metal ring bears the motif of one of pop art’s most recognizable artworks. Modeled after Robert Indiana’s LOVE graphics and sculptures, the ring represents an element of popular design that reveals the relationship between...
Image features red and black interlocking figures creating an all over pattern. Distinct figures include two that are upside down at lower left and right on either side of "83". Enclosed by a red border. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Designed for Fun
In celebration of World Pride, June Object of the Day posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection. Today’s blog post was originally published February 8th, 2015. A favored hangout among the early 1980s East Village art scene, the Fun Gallery became home to some of the New York City’s most notable artists, including...