After a three-year renovation, New York City's Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum has reopened with interactive exhibits, revamped collections, and a renewed sense of purpose.
The first thing you notice about the new Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, which reopened today after a three-year renovation, is that the design isn't concerned with aesthetic consistency. The institution is housed in a historic mansion once owned by the Carnegie family, and yet the exhibitions focus on contemporary design objects and ideas. The square display cases, interactive touch-screen tables, and suspended ceiling lights sit starkly against noble woodcarvings and moldings that hark back to the building's turn-of-the-20th-century origins. But the contrasts don't distract from the success of the museum’s transformation.
No Country for Old Men: Together Canes, 2012. Designed and produced by Francesca Lanzavecchia (Italian, b. 1984) and Hunn Wai (British, b. 1980), Lanzavecchia + Wai (Italy). Maple, lacquered MDF. Courtesy of the designers. Photography: Davide Farabegoli. © Cooper Hewitt, courtesy of Condé Nast Traveler
Reopening on the 112th anniversary of the day steel magnate Andrew Carnegie and his family moved into the home, Cooper Hewitt brings innovation to each of its 10 opening exhibitions. Making Designand the Process Lab encourage visitors to touch, hold, and play with everyday objects and dynamic technology. Interactive screens allow people to create better forms for quotidian items like a shopping cart or a cane, inviting all visitors to innovate like a product designer. The idea is to inspire people to learn about and create objects where function and design meet, solving real-world design problems based on characteristics like people’s heights and abilities.
These interactive technologies also allow visitors to explore the museum’s expansive collection. In the new Immersion Room, you can search from 200 images of wall coverings dating back to 1780—with designs by Andy Warhol, Frank Lloyd Wright, and William Morris among them—and project them on the surrounding walls; or you can create your own wallpaper to display.
Installation view: Immersion Room. Photo: Matt Flynn © 2014 Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum via Condé Nast Traveler
The new space also highlights precious objects dating as far back as the 5th century. The second floor is now dedicated to the museum’s permanent collection, showcasing a variety of objects like birdcages and textiles. Go downstairs and you'll find the exhibit Maira Kalman Selects, in which the artist and designer Maira Kalman deepens our understanding of how design affects personal histories. She muses on artifacts like a pair of 19th century linen slippers and Abraham Lincoln’s watch, exploring how objects carry memories. It's a theme that's carried throughout the museum as a whole. By emphasizing the ways design objects—both the practical and the ornate—affect our everyday lives, the renewed Cooper Hewitt has become a true 21st-century institution.
