Cooper Hewitt members at the Design Insider level and above are cordially invited to Cooper Hewitt on Wednesday, February 5, for a Design Salon. Design Salons welcome leading figures in design today for inspiring conversations hosted from the intimate setting of the Carnegie Mansion.
Maria Nicanor, Director of Cooper Hewitt, will be joined by Max Hollein, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Sharon Johnston, FAIA, and Mark Lee, founding partners of architecture firm Johnston Marklee, for a conversation about museum architecture and redesigning historical spaces to serve new museum models.
About the speakers
MAX HOLLEIN is the Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since beginning at The Met, Hollein has overseen over 100 exhibitions, launched several historic capital projects, including the new Tang Wing for Modern and Contemporary Art (to be opened in 2030), secured preeminent acquisitions and donations, and reenvisioned the Museum’s approach to public outreach through education and digital initiatives. Hollein has published and lectured widely and has organized a number of major exhibitions in modern and contemporary art. He is a member of supervisory and advisory boards of major cultural institutions worldwide, including The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York; the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; Neue Galerie, New York; and Phileas – The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art, Vienna. Named a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture in 2009 and a recipient of the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and the Arts, he received the Goethe badge of honor from the Hessian Ministry of Culture in 2016, the Goethe badge of honor from the City of Frankfurt in 2019, and an Hommage award by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in 2020, among other international awards.
SHARON JOHNSTON, FAIA, and MARK LEE are the founding partners of Johnston Marklee, based in Los Angeles, CA and Cambridge, MA. Since its establishment in 1998, Johnston Marklee has been recognized nationally and internationally with over 50 major awards, including the 2024 Richard Neutra Award for Professional Excellence and the 2022 American Academy of Arts & Letters Award in Architecture. Johnston and Lee are both Design Critics at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where Lee served as Chair of the Department of Architecture.
Projects undertaken by Johnston Marklee are diverse in scale and type, spanning fourteen countries throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Recent projects include the permanent home for the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program (ISP) at Roy Lichtenstein Studio in New York’s Greenwich Village; the UCLA Graduate Art Studios campus in Culver City, California; and the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston, Texas.
MARIA NICANOR is an architecture and design curator and historian and is the Director of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Nicanor is passionate about rethinking the traditional roles of museums and experimenting with new formats that connect cultural institutions with civic life. Previously, Nicanor was the Executive Director of Rice Design Alliance, the public programs and outreach arm of the Rice School of Architecture in Houston. She was also the inaugural Director of the Norman Foster Foundation in Madrid, and was previously a curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Photos of Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee by Todd Cole. Photo of Maria Nicanor by Liz Ligon.
