Only a few short weeks left to see Ted Muehling Selects: Lobmeyr Glass from the Permanent Collection. Watch designer Ted Muehling and curator Sarah Coffin as they discuss highlights from the exhibition in this 5 minute walkthrough:   Curated by Ted Muehling, the exhibition draws from the museum’s recent acquisition of 163 rare examples of...

  Over the past several weeks, I explored the Cooper-Hewitt Museum Design Museum Library’s collection of illustrated children’s books as part of the Arts Intern program through Studio in a School. During my time in the Library, I have discovered seemingly endless treasures in the children’s book collection, including a vast range of illustrative styles,...

Here’s some impressive trivia: Q – How many Museums are there in the Smithsonian? A – 19, including the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Q – How many objects in the collections? A – 137,000,000. Q – How many visitors last year? A – 30,000,000. Q – How many website visits? A – 188,000,000. Yes, those...

Cooper-Hewitt Staff   T-Shirt Design I was surprised when I arrived at work yesterday morning when Pete (Ron Petersen), who makes the place clean and ready everyday, said cheerfully, “Great day for a photo-op!” I had no idea what he was talking about. It made sense in the middle of the morning, when Jennifer Northrop,...

Personally, I am partial to Richard Meier’s approach to architecture. According to Meier, a building is an act of “willful artificiality;” a “man-made” spatial construct that functions as a receptacle for experiencing the world of nature. Meier’s white walls act as nature’s film screen capturing ever-changing patterns of reflected color and light. While Meier credits...

Just in time for the marathon eating season to begin, Cooper-Hewitt’s exhibition Feeding Desire: Design and the Tools of the Table is open at the Winterthur, a fantastic museum of decorative arts located in Delaware’s Brandywine Valley. The Winterthur is a curator’s dream destination, with its astonishing collection of historic objects and its richly stocked...

Fernando and Humberto explain their TransPlastic series as a fictional story wherein, in a world made of plastic, synthetic matter eventually becomes fertile ground for transgenic creations in which nature grows from and eventually overpowers plastic. The Trans… chair, the final piece in the Campanas’ TransPlastic collection, was designed especially for Cooper-Hewitt and is featured...

Here’s another blog that just became a book: Michael Bierut’s new collection of essays, Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design, published by Princeton Architectural Press. Sixty-eight of those essays first appeared on Design Observer, the blog that Bierut edits with Wiliam Drenttel, Jessica Helfand, and contributors. Bierut has started a conversation at Design Observer about why...

Recently released is The Word It Book, a collection of visual submissions to the blog Speak Up. “Word It” is one of SpeakUp’s most popular and original features. Each month, a different word is posted on the site, and anyone who so desires can submit a visual/verbal interpretation. (Selections from Word It are on view...