Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum today announced it will celebrate 25 years of the prestigious National Design Awards program and named the 2025 Award winners. Launched in 2000 as an official project of the White House Millennium Council, the National Design Awards and its associated public programs seek to increase national awareness of the impact of design in everyday life. 

“Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial,” opening Nov. 2 at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, features 25 debut commissions that illustrate the ways design is embedded in contemporary life. Ranging from domestic objects to built environments to social systems, the exhibition considers home as an expansive framework with varying cultural and environmental contexts, and “making home” as a universal design practice. Organized in collaboration with Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, the seventh iteration of Cooper Hewitt’s Triennial series will be on view through Aug. 10, 2025.

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum today announced the appointment of Elissa Black as deputy director, effective Sept. 9. Deeply experienced in both the non-profit and for-profit sectors, Black brings more than 20 years of executive leadership to the role. She has worked nationally and internationally on strategy, vision and short- and long-term planning for museums and cultural organizations, overseeing the development and implementation of dynamic cultural programming, as well as managing complex financial and administrative functions.

This fall, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum will present “Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial.” Featuring 25 site-specific, newly commissioned installations, the exhibition explores design’s role in shaping the physical and emotional realities of home across the U.S., U.S. territories and tribal nations. On view Nov. 2 through summer 2025, “Making Home” is the seventh offering in the museum’s Design Triennial series, which was established in 2000 to address the most urgent topics of the time through the lens of design.

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum today announced the appointment of Chris Fralic to its board of trustees.

This March, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum will present “Acquired! Shaping the National Design Collection,” an exhibition highlighting how the museum acquires new work to shape the collection to better reflect current issues and design’s evolving role in daily interactions. Presented on the second-floor galleries, the exhibition will feature more than 150 works, including objects that represent the museum’s collecting legacy, as well as works brought into the collection since 2017 that demonstrate what it means to be a design museum today.

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum announced today that it has received a donation of $1 million from Cooper Hewitt trustee Kimberly Schuessler and Smithsonian National Board member Morgan (Mac) Schuessler, Jr. The gift will bring to life the museum’s exhibition and engagement programs through funds for operations and projects that elevate design on the national stage.

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum today announced the winners of the 2023 National Design Awards, recognizing design innovation and impact in 10 categories. Now in their 24th year, the National Design Awards bring national recognition to the ways in which design enriches everyday life. Award recipients are selected by a multidisciplinary jury of practitioners, educators and leaders from a wide range of design fields. The winners will be honored at an Awards celebration Thursday, Oct. 5 at Cooper Hewitt.

Cooper Hewitt will present “An Atlas of Es Devlin” from Nov. 18 through Aug. 11, 2024. The genre-defying British contemporary artist and designer Es Devlin (b. 1971) is globally renowned for her large-scale, illuminated installations and sculptures for performances. Her wide-ranging practice, which began in small-scale theater, has been experienced by millions in some of the world's most prominent museums, galleries, opera houses, arena and stadia. Her highly collaborative work is at once deeply personal and inherently collective. Devlin views the audience as a temporary society and invites public participation in communal works to encourage profound cognitive shifts.