Museum Tour: Cooper Hewitt
About the Museum
Cooper Hewitt is America’s design museum. An integral part of the Smithsonian Institution — the world’s largest museum and research complex — Cooper Hewitt is located on New York City’s Museum Mile in the historic, landmark Carnegie Mansion.
Steward of one of the world’s most diverse and comprehensive design collections — over 210,000 objects that range from an ancient Egyptian faience cup dating to about 1100 BC to contemporary 3-D-printed objects and digital code — Cooper Hewitt welcomes everyone to discover the importance of design and its power to change the world.
Cooper Hewitt knits digital into experiences to enhance ideas, extend reach beyond museum walls and enable greater access, personalization, experimentation and connection.
Floor Introduction
On the first floor, there is only one exhibition about the language of symbols demonstrates how symbol design is a dynamic and collaborative effort through which individuals and communities have created, adopted, and redesigned symbols over time.
The most interesting recent exhibition on the second floor is HECTOR GUIMARD: HOW PARIS GOT ITS CURVES. Co-organized by Cooper Hewitt and the Richard H. Driehaus Museum, Chicago, this exhibition invites a new understanding of France’s most famous art nouveau architect, Hector Guimard (1867–1942). By providing urban and historical context for the full range of Guimard’s output — realized and unrealized — this exhibition aims to present a more nuanced view of the “Style Guimard,” emphasizing Guimard’s working process and his strategies to market it.
The third floor is a digital exhibition, the recent exhibition is about Designing Peace.
AN EXHIBIT THAT I LIKE
This is an online visual exhibition“Nature-Based Design: Plant Expression”.
In 1889, designer Paulding Farnham created the enamel and gemstone orchid for Tiffany & Co causing a sensation at the Paris World’s Fair.
The choice of orchids coincided with a time when the flowers were being sought out in the gardens of the wealthy, who were also patrons of jewelry companies.
Related News and Issues
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum announced the formal establishment of the Digital curatorial department, which will collect and care for born-digital work. The Digital department is the first entirely new collecting department at Cooper Hewitt in more than 125 years.
“Digital design will continue to radically change how we interact with the world and with each other in critical ways,” said Maria Nicanor, director of Cooper Hewitt.
As a material format, born-digital design — work that originates and exists digitally — is among the most rapidly expanding realms of design practice. Interaction design, data visualization, app design, web design, information architecture, game design, digital animation, born-digital typography, interface design, artificial intelligence and more are central areas of design innovation weaved into people’s everyday experiences.
Currently, the museum holds nearly 70 file- and code-based digital works in its Digital department, including data visualizations, digital typefaces, web-based interactive works, icons and emojis, websites and more.
