Bob Greenberg is the sixteenth guest curator of the Selects series, which invites designers, artists, writers, and cultural figures to explore and respond to the permanent collection. A 2003 National Design Award winner for Communication Design and founder of the international design innovation company R/GA, Greenberg has been a pioneer of the advertising and communications industry for four decades. To emphasize design’s key role in our increasingly connected world, Greenberg chose 42 significant works that illustrate how technology has propelled design innovations in form, style and function over the past 65 years. Presented in four groupings—Dieter Rams’s Ten Principles for Good Design, Connected Devices, Disruptive Innovations, and Measurement and Calculation—the installation underscores how historical objects point to future innovation.
Highlights
A selection of objects from the exhibition.
ET55 Calculator; 1980; Designed by Dieter Rams (German, b. 1932) and Dietrich Lubs (German, b. 1938); Manufactured by Braun AG (Frankfurt, Germany); Molded ABS plastic, electronic components; 13.6 × 7.6 × 1 cm (5 3/8 × 3 × 3/8 in.); Gift of George R. Kravis II, 2015-5-4
DYNATAC 8000X MOBILE TELEPHONE;
1983; Designed by Martin Cooper (American,
b. 1928), Rudy Krolopp (American, b. 1930)
and Donald Linder (American, b. ca. 1943);
Manufactured by Motorola Inc. (Libertyville,
Illinois, USA); Molded plastic, electronic
components; 19.5 × 7.5 × 4 cm (7 11/16
× 2 15/16 × 1 9/16 in.); Gift of Robert M.
Greenberg, 2017-51-25
CORRECTING SELECTRIC II, MODEL
895 TYPEWRITER AND TYPING ELEMENTS;
1973; Designed by Eliot Noyes (American,
19101977); Manufactured by IBM (Armonk,
New York, USA); Aluminum, steel, molded
plastic; typewriter: 18 × 51 × 38 cm (7 1/16
× 20 1/16 × 14 15/16 in.); typing element
(each): Diam. 3.8 cm (1 1/2 in.); Gift of Robert
M. Greenberg, 2017-51-10-a/g
Timor Perpetual Calendar, 1967; Designed by Enzo Mari (Italian, b. 1932); Manufactured by Danese Milano (Milan, Italy); Molded ABS plastic, lithographed PVC plastic; 15 x 17 x 9.4 cm (5 7/8 x 6 11/16 x 3 11/16 in.); Gift of Max and Barbara Pine, 1994-59-2
Download the Bob Greenberg Selects app
Experience cutting-edge interactive technology, learn more about the exhibition, and explore the connections among the broad range of objects on view. The Bob Greenberg Selects app is downloadable for free and offers state-of-the-art image-recognition technology for visitors to “scan and learn” by taking a picture of an object and discovering explanatory and related materials. Users of the app can also connect at any time to the audio commentary provided by leading designers, including Bob Greenberg, Cooper Hewitt’s Senior Curator of Contemporary Design Ellen Lupton, and Pentagram partner Michael Bierut.
The founder, chairman, and CEO of R/GA, a worldwide digital advertising agency, product and service innovator, and consultancy. Bob Greenberg is the 16th guest curator in Cooper Hewitt’s Selects series, in which prominent influencers, designers, and artists are invited to mine and interpret the museum’s collection of more than 210,000 objects. The R/GA team made three videos...
In celebration of Women’s History Month, March Object of the Day posts highlight women designers in the collection. When Isabelle Olsson, head of Industrial Design for Wearables, arrived at Google she was given the brief to make the existing clunky Google Glass prototype (a cellphone’s motherboard, a battery, and a Pico projector all taped to...
As the head of design at Braun, a German consumer goods manufacturer, from 1961 to 1995, Dieter Rams created a myriad of products—from calculators to fans to watches–which are now considered hallmarks of 20th century industrial design. Many of these objects are currently on display in Bob Greenberg Selects at Cooper Hewitt until September 9, 2018....
Danese, the Milanese manufacturer of this calendar, often collaborated with the Italian designer Enzo Mari. Together they created a range of products—from domestic tools to office supplies. Their products strove to underscore “the dimension of play as a cognitive tool.”[1] The Timor calendar reflects this philosophy as it requires the user to flip around the...
These HLD 4 No. 4414 hair dryers announce a new design idiom for the hair dryer with their rounded rectangular shape and bold colors. On the hair dryer’s front face there is a bisected slotted grill. Two central rows of slits correspond to the placement of a black rocker switch, which is easily operated with...
We’ve come so far technologically that cell phones are now in museums. And in a museum is likely the only place most people will have seen this model – the world’s first commercially available handheld cellular phone. When it came out, it weighed 2.5 pounds, required ten hours for charging for 35 minutes of talk...
Dieter Rams, the co-designer of this alarm clock, said that good design should “omit the unimportant in order to emphasize the important.” This travel alarm clock embodies his philosophy and design aesthetic—one which became iconic for Braun in the 1970s. The clock features an economic use of color and Akzidenz Grotesk, an easy-to-read sans serif...
