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Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is a
design museum The Design Museum in Kensington, London, England, exhibits product, industrial, graphic, fashion, and architectural design. In 2018, the museum won the European Museum of the Year Award. The museum operates as a registered charity, and all fund ...
at the Andrew Carnegie Mansion in
Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
, New York City, along the
Upper East Side The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the boroughs of New York City, borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded approximately by 96th Street (Manhattan), 96th Street to the north, the East River to the e ...
's Museum Mile. It is one of 19
Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase a ...
museums and one of three Smithsonian facilities located in New York City, along with the
National Museum of the American Indian The National Museum of the American Indian is a museum in the United States devoted to the culture of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. It is part of the Smithsonian Institution group of museums and research centers. The museum has three ...
's
George Gustav Heye Center The National Museum of the American Indian–New York, the George Gustav Heye Center, is a branch of the National Museum of the American Indian at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in Manhattan, New York City. The museum is part of the Sm ...
in
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and the
Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washing ...
New York Research Center in the
Flatiron District The Flatiron District is a neighborhood in the borough (New York City), borough of Manhattan of New York City, named after the Flatiron Building at 23rd Street (Manhattan), 23rd Street, Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Generally ...
. Unlike other Smithsonian museums, Cooper Hewitt charges an admissions fee. It is the only museum in the United States devoted to historical and contemporary design. Its collections and exhibitions explore design aesthetic and creativity from throughout the United States' history.


History


Early history

In 1895, several granddaughters of the politician and businessman
Peter Cooper Peter Cooper (February 12, 1791April 4, 1883) was an American industrialist, inventor, philanthropist, and politician. He designed and built the first American steam locomotive, the ''Tom Thumb (locomotive), Tom Thumb'', founded the Cooper Union ...
Sarah Cooper Hewitt, Eleanor Garnier Hewitt and Amy Hewitt Green—asked the
Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly known as Cooper Union, is a private college on Cooper Square in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-s ...
college in New York City for space to create a Museum for the Arts of Decoration. The museum would take its inspiration from the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris and would serve as a place for Cooper Union students and professional designers to study
decorative art ] The decorative arts are arts or crafts whose aim is the design and manufacture of objects that are both Beauty, beautiful and functional. This includes most of the objects for the interiors of buildings, as well as interior design, but typical ...
s collections. Cooper Union's trustees provided the fourth floor of the Foundation Building. It opened in 1897 as the "Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration". The museum was free and open to the public three days a week. The Hewitt sisters donated some of the objects that they owned to the museum. Early in the museum's history, the Cooper Union Museum received three textile collections from
J. P. Morgan John Pierpont Morgan Sr. (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and investment banker who dominated corporate finance on Wall Street throughout the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. As the head of the banking firm that ...
and drawings by Giovanni Baglione. The three sisters served as directors of the Museum until Sarah Cooper Hewitt died in 1930. After her death, four directors were appointed to run the museum. Constance P. Hare served as chair. In 1938, Edwin S. Burdell became the director of the Cooper Union. The museum became his responsibility. The board of directors was abolished and an advisory council was established. Through the mid-20th century, the museum's collection came to include furniture, wallpapers, leatherwork, millinery, ceramics, jewelry, textiles, and media such as drawings and prints. The museum had begun to decline by the 1950s and 1960s, in part because it was in a hard-to-find location, and Cooper Union students preferred modern art over the museum's dated collections.


Threats of closure

By the 1960s, the museum and college started to distance themselves from one another in regards to programming. Other departments of the Cooper Union were making financial demands. The Cooper Union announced in June 1963 that it was considering shuttering the museum completely, and the museum closed on July 3, 1963. In explaining the closure, the college said that the museum was far from other visitor attractions, the museum space was too small, and it was seeing declining use. Cooper Union officials also said their endowment could not fund the museum's continued operations. This prompted concerns that the museum's collection could be dispersed. A Committee to Save the Cooper Union Museum, formed by Henry Francis Du Pont, threatened to sue to prevent the museum from closing. The committee requested that the Cooper Union's trustees split the museum off from the college's main operations. Another organization, the Greenwich Village Committee, was also formed in July 1963 to try to prevent the proposed relocation of the museum's collections. The museum reopened September 16, 1963, with its future still uncertain. That November, the Cooper Union accepted the American Association of Museums' offer to conduct a study on the future of the museum. The
Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
, which was located nearby, offered to take over all of the museum's holdings. By 1965, the
Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase a ...
had begun negotiating to take over the museum from the Cooper Union. At the time, the institution was rapidly expanding the number of artworks and artifacts in its other museums.


Smithsonian operation


1960s and 1970s

On October 9, 1967, Smithsonian Secretary S. Dillon Ripley and Daniel Maggin, the chair of the
board of trustees A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...
, signed an agreement turning over the collection and library of the museum to the Smithsonian. As part of the agreement, the museum was to stay in New York City permanently and would remain in the Cooper Union's Foundation Building for three years. Even before it had finalized its acquisition, the Smithsonian was negotiating to lease the Andrew Carnegie Mansion on Manhattan's
Upper East Side The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the boroughs of New York City, borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded approximately by 96th Street (Manhattan), 96th Street to the north, the East River to the e ...
as the collection's new home. The mansion was five times as large as the museum's Cooper Union space. The
New York Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the State of New York is the superior court in the Judiciary of New York. It is vested with unlimited civil and criminal jurisdiction, although in many counties outside New York City it acts primarily as a court of civil ju ...
approved the agreement on May 14, 1968. The museum was officially transferred to the Smithsonian on July 1, becoming the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Design, and Richard T. Wunder was named as the director.; Wunder planned to obtain objects from around the world. Despite being part of the Smithsonian Institution, the Cooper Hewitt still did not have enough cash to sustain its own operations. In 1969, it was renamed again to the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Decorative Arts and Design. Ripley leased the Carnegie Mansion from the
Carnegie Corporation of New York The Carnegie Corporation of New York is a philanthropic fund established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to support education programs across the United States, and later the world. Since its founding, the Carnegie Corporation has endowed or othe ...
in September 1969.; Lisa Taylor became the Cooper-Hewitt's director that October, the first woman to serve in that position. The museum, which was the first Smithsonian museum outside of Washington, D.C., moved to its home at the Carnegie Mansion in 1970. The museum obtained the mansion outright in 1972. During the early 1970s, the museum was temporarily closed while it relocated from the Foundation Building to the Carnegie Mansion. During this time, it hosted exhibits at venues such as the Seventh Regiment Armory.; By the middle of the decade, the collection had grown to 250 pieces of furniture, 500 glass objects, 1,500 ceramic objects, 6,000 wallpaper samples, 18,000 textile samples, and 30,000 drawings. The museum had 35 paid staff and 72 volunteers by 1976, and it received $258,000 annually in federal funding. In addition, the museum planned to raise money through events, donations, and membership fees. A soft opening for the museum took place in May 1976. The museum opened to the public on October 7, 1976, with the exhibition "MAN transFORMs". Other museums around the city hosted exhibitions to celebrate the Cooper-Hewitt's opening. Taylor and renovation architect Hugh Hardy planned to convert the mansion's basements into exhibit space, and they also planned a new auditorium, galleries, classrooms, and screening rooms. A conservation laboratory was opened in July 1978. The Samuel H. Kress Foundation funded the lab and it focuses on textile and paper conservation. At the time of the Cooper-Hewitt's reopening, it was the only museum in the U.S. that was dedicated exclusively to design.


1980s and 1990s

The Cooper-Hewitt launched a
master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional prac ...
program in conjunction with the
Parsons School of Design The Parsons School of Design is a private art and design college under The New School located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhattan art ...
in 1982. Under Taylor's leadership, the museum also began offering additional educational programs both for adults and for children. In the eight years after the Cooper-Hewitt reopened, it hosted over 100 temporary exhibitions. Lisa Taylor announced her retirement in 1987, and the Cooper-Hewitt celebrated the tenth anniversary of its occupancy of the Carnegie Mansion shortly thereafter. At the time, in contrast to most Smithsonian museums, the Cooper-Hewitt relied on the Smithsonian for only one-third of its annual budget. Dianne H. Pilgrim became the director in 1988, and the museum was again renamed to Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum that year. According to Pilgrim, the name change was intended to reflect the Cooper-Hewitt's purpose as a "design museum" that focused on the process of design, rather than a "museum of design" that focused on objects. The Smithsonian bought the McAlpin-Minot House at 11 East 90th Street in 1989 for $3.6 million, and it connected that house to the Carnegie Mansion and 9 East 90th Street. An archive of African American designs was created at the museum in 1991. Pilgrim hired James Stewart Polshek Partners to devise plans for a further renovation of the Cooper-Hewitt buildings. The project was initially planned to cost $10 million, but Smithsonian secretary Michael Heyman placed the plans on hold in late 1994 due to cost overruns. The budget ultimately increased to $20 million; this consisted of a $13 million allocation from the Smithsonian and $7 million from private sources. The museum's logo was changed in late 1994 to emphasize the word "design". Pilgrim announced in May 1995 that the exhibition galleries in the Carnegie Mansion would close for renovation, and the renovation commenced that August. The Carnegie Mansion's first-floor exhibit space reopened in September 1996, Work on the passageway and design resources center continued through 1997, and the renovation was not completed until 1998.


2000s

Pilgrim retired from the museum in 2000, and Paul W. Thompson was named as the new director later that year. At the time of Thompson's appointment, the ''New York Times'' described the Carnegie Mansion as "an almost impossible venue for staging exhibitions on modern design" because the mansion was so much smaller than other museum buildings. Upon becoming the museum's director, Thompson sought to display modern design pieces at the Cooper-Hewitt. Thompson expanded the museum's board of trustees from 18 to 23 members, and the amount each trustee was expected to donate was increased from $10,000 to $25,000. He also planned to increase visitor numbers by one-third, to 200,000. Following the
September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...
, the Smithsonian ordered the Cooper-Hewitt to downsize, and Thompson eliminated four senior staff positions in June 2002, a move that prompted complaints from employees. In addition, over a dozen senior staff members resigned during 2001 and 2002, citing dissatisfaction with the work culture. Museum staff told ''The New York Times'' that passersby often did not know of the museum's existence or assumed it was affiliated with the Spence School on the same city block. Thompson originally did not want to expand the museum, but he changed his mind after the museum experienced staffing, budgetary, and exhibit shortages. The museum announced plans in mid-2003 to rearrange galleries, and several members of the museum's board indicated the same year that they would host a master plan competition, in advance of an expansion. News media reported in February 2005 that the Cooper-Hewitt was considering a $75 million proposal by Beyer Blinder Belle to expand the museum buildings. The basement levels would also have contained a restaurant, conservation rooms, and exhibit-preparation areas. Beyer Blinder Belle proposed a revised plan in 2006, which was to cost $25 million. That year, the museum launched a
capital campaign Fundraising or fund-raising is the process of seeking and gathering voluntary financial contributions by engaging individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies. Although fundraising typically refers to efforts to gathe ...
to raise funds for the renovation and the museum's endowment;; it had raised $21.5 million by April 2007. The Cooper-Hewitt hired Gluckman Mayner Architects to design the renovation, along with Beyer Blinder Belle as preservation consultants. By October 2008, the cost of the project had increased to $64 million.; The Smithsonian began renovating the two townhouses on 90th Street in 2008, with plans to relocate the museum's offices from the mansion to the townhouses. In July 2009, Thompson left the museum to become the rector of the
Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public university, public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City, London, White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design uni ...
.


2010s to present

Bill Moggridge, a co-founder of
IDEO IDEO () is a design firm, design and consulting firm with offices in the U.S., England, and China. It was founded in Palo Alto, California, in 1991. The company's 500 staff uses a design thinking approach to design products, services, environmen ...
and designer of the first
laptop A laptop computer or notebook computer, also known as a laptop or notebook, is a small, portable personal computer (PC). Laptops typically have a Clamshell design, clamshell form factor (design), form factor with a flat-panel computer scree ...
computer, served as Cooper-Hewitt's director in January 2011. The Carnegie Mansion was closed to the public in July 2011, during which the museum held exhibitions at the
headquarters of the United Nations , image = Midtown Manhattan Skyline 004 (cropped).jpg , image_size = 275px , caption = View of the complex from Long Island City in 2021; from left to right: the Secretariat, Conference, and General Assembly buil ...
and on
Governors Island Governors Island is a island in New York Harbor, within the Boroughs of New York City, New York City borough of Manhattan. It is located approximately south of Manhattan Island, and is separated from Brooklyn to the east by the Buttermilk ...
. The museum opened a new online retail shop in 2012. That year, the Cooper-Hewitt created an additional space in
Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater ...
as an education facility. Designer Todd Oldham donated design services for the space. After Moggridge's death in 2012, Caroline Baumann was named as the museum's director in June 2013. In June 2014, the museum's name was changed again to Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. A new graphic identity,
wordmark A wordmark or word mark is a text-only statement of the name of a product, service, company, organization, or institution which is used for purposes of identification and branding. A wordmark can be an actual word (e.g., Apple), a made-up term ...
, and new website were launched on this day. The identity was designed by Eddie Opara of Pentagram. The website was developed by Matcha Labs. On December 12, 2014, the Cooper Hewitt reopened to the public. Renovations included an "Immersion Room", an interactive space that provides visitors digital access to the museums collection of wallpaper. The main exhibition space was expanded and the museum had a custom
open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...
font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a ''typeface'', defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design. For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) includes fonts " Roman" (or "regul ...
, which remains available for free download and modification, designed for its reopening. In March 2015 the museum introduced the use of a digital pen for visitors to collect objects with. In 2015, the terrace and garden renovations were completed and opened to the public, with design led by
Walter Hood Walter J. Hood (born 1958) is an American designer, artist, academic administrator, and educator. He is professor of landscape architecture & environmental planning and urban design and chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture & Environm ...
. The Cooper Hewitt hired conservator Cass Fino-Radin in 2016 to review the museum's digital collection, a process which took two years. Baumann resigned as director in February 2020, following an investigation by the Smithsonian's inspector general concerning her wedding to John Stewart Malcolmson in 2018. In response, several of the museum's board member threatened to resign, claiming Baumann had been improperly forced out. In February 2022, Maria Nicanor was appointed as the museum's director.


Collection

The Cooper Hewitt collections consist of decorative and design objects. The museum's original collection focused on architecture, sculpture, painted architecture, decorative arts,
woodwork Woodworking is the skill of making items from wood, and includes cabinetry, furniture making, wood carving, joinery, carpentry, and woodturning. History Along with stone, clay and animal parts, wood was one of the first materials worked by ...
,
metalwork Metalworking is the process of shaping and reshaping metals in order to create useful objects, parts, assemblies, and large scale structures. As a term, it covers a wide and diverse range of processes, skills, and tools for producing objects on e ...
,
pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other raw materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. The place where such wares are made by a ''potter'' is al ...
,
costume Costume is the distinctive style of dress and/or makeup of an individual or group that reflects class, gender, occupation, ethnicity, nationality, activity or epoch—in short, culture. The term also was traditionally used to describe typica ...
,
musical instruments A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who pl ...
and furniture. The museum has more than 200,000 objects in its collection , although estimates range as high as 250,000. These range from
matchbook A matchbook is a small paperboard folder (known as a matchcover) enclosing a quantity of matches and having a coarse striking surface on the exterior. The folder is opened to access the matches, which are attached in a comb-like arrangement ...
s to
shopping bag Shopping bags are medium-sized bags, typically around 10–20 litres (2.5–5 gallons) in volume (though much larger versions exist, especially for non-grocery shopping), that are used by shoppers to carry home their purchases. Some are intende ...
s,
porcelain Porcelain (), also called china, is a ceramic material made by heating Industrial mineral, raw materials, generally including kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The greater strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to oth ...
from the
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
, and the papers of graphic designer Tibor Kalman. The museum had a metalwork gallery, which showcased historic iron grillwork and a room devoted to ironwork, both of which no longer are focus rooms.


Visual art collection

The museum holds the world's largest collection of works on paper by Hudson River School painter
Frederic Edwin Church Frederic Edwin Church (May 4, 1826 – April 7, 1900) was an American landscape painting, landscape painter born in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters, best known for paintin ...
. By 1976, the museum's collection included 200 Tiepolo paintings, 2,000 F. E. Church sketches, and a large number of Winslow Homer drawings. In 2002, a rare 16th-century drawing from
Michelangelo Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6March 147518February 1564), known mononymously as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspir ...
(for which the Cooper Union Museum had paid $60 in 1962) was discovered in the Cooper-Hewitt's collection.


Furniture collection

The Cooper Hewitt also has a large furniture collection. Some of the objects include a chair used by
Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War ...
during a visit to the Cooper Union, a cardboard easy chair designed by
Frank Gehry Frank Owen Gehry ( ; ; born February 28, 1929) is a Canadian-American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become attractions. Gehry rose to prominence in th ...
, as well as "twig and root" furniture. Museum namesake
Peter Cooper Peter Cooper (February 12, 1791April 4, 1883) was an American industrialist, inventor, philanthropist, and politician. He designed and built the first American steam locomotive, the ''Tom Thumb (locomotive), Tom Thumb'', founded the Cooper Union ...
created the first steel chair in the United States, one of which resides in the museum collection.


Other objects

Upon its opening, Abram S. Hewitt's wife, Sarah Amelia Hewitt donated a
lace Lace is a delicate fabric made of yarn or thread in an open weblike pattern, made by machine or by hand. Generally, lace is split into two main categories, needlelace and bobbin lace, although there are other types of lace, such as knitted o ...
collection, George Hearn donated two
fountain A fountain, from the Latin "fons" ( genitive "fontis"), meaning source or spring, is a decorative reservoir used for discharging water. It is also a structure that jets water into the air for a decorative or dramatic effect. Fountains were o ...
s worth $1,000, and Lloyd Bryce's wife donated art and objects from the
Palace of Fontainebleau Palace of Fontainebleau ( , ; ), located southeast of the center of Paris, in the commune of Fontainebleau, is one of the largest French royal châteaux. It served as a hunting lodge and summer residence for many of the List of French monarchs ...
. When the museum acquired the Carnegie Mansion in 1972, it also received some interior decorations from the Widener family's townhouse at 5 East 70th Street (now the site of an annex to the Henry Clay Frick House). By the time the modern museum opened in 1976, it was recorded as having lantern brackets, window grilles, a balcony, 4,000 metal artifacts, and 30,000 international symbols donated by Henry Dreyfuss and his wife Doris. It also had other objects such as 2,000 buttons, 4,280 match cases, lock-and-key sets, pots, skyscraper drawings, and many pieces of
Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...
and
Art Nouveau Art Nouveau ( ; ; ), Jugendstil and Sezessionstil in German, is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. It was often inspired by natural forms such as the sinuous curves of plants and ...
design. The museum has held notable objects in its collection such as John Lennon's psychedelic Rolls-Royce. The car was donated by Lennon and
Yoko Ono Yoko Ono (, usually spelled in katakana as ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up in Tokyo and moved to New York ...
in 1978 and was auctioned off at
Sotheby's Sotheby's ( ) is a British-founded multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine art, fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...
in mid-1985 for $2.09 million. A punch bowl replicated by
Eleanor Roosevelt Anna Eleanor Roosevelt ( ; October 11, 1884November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the longest-serving First Lady of the United States, first lady of the United States, during her husband Franklin D ...
, a scarlet Valentine Olivetti typewriter, and an
Adrian Saxe Adrian Saxe is an American ceramic artist who was born in Glendale, California in 1943. He lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Biography Saxe studied at the Chouinard Art Institute (Los Angeles, California) from 1965 to 1969 and earned ...
vase were also part of the collection.


Exhibitions

Exhibitions at the Cooper Hewitt explore the history and culture of design and decorative arts. Shows have historically focused on singular topics. The first themed shows were organized by Cooper Union Museum director Calvin S. Hathaway in 1933; beforehand, the objects in the museum's collections were primarily used for academic purposes.


Before the 1970s

The museum hosted two special exhibitions at the
1964 New York World's Fair The 1964 New York World's Fair (also known as the 1964–1965 New York World's Fair) was an world's fair, international exposition at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York City, United States. The fair included exhibitions, activ ...
. A 1968 exhibition called "Please Be Seated", focused on contemporary chairs.


1970s to 1990s

During the 1970s, the museum hosted exhibits on subjects such as
resort A resort (North American English) is a self-contained commercial establishment that aims to provide most of a vacationer's needs. This includes food, drink, swimming, accommodation, sports, entertainment and shopping, on the premises. A hotel ...
and motel architecture; objects from the Brighton Pavilion; architectural drawings; John Lennon's Rolls-Royce; Alvar Aalto's architectural works, and hundreds of objects on loan from various other Smithsonian museums. The museum's exhibits in the early 1980s concerned such themes as the history and culture of the
ocean liner An ocean liner is a type of passenger ship primarily used for transportation across seas or oceans. Ocean liners may also carry cargo or mail, and may sometimes be used for other purposes (such as for pleasure cruises or as hospital ships). The ...
,; puppets, hair styles,; copy machine art, plants, British art, Scandinavian design,; and teapots. In 1983, the Cooper-Hewitt was the first museum in the United States to exhibit the Amsterdam School.; Topics of the museum's exhibits in the second half of the 1980s included wine-related objects, a showcase of art related to Berlin, a tribute to art dealer
Siegfried Bing Samuel Siegfried Bing (26 February 1838 – 6 September 1905), who usually gave his name as S. Bing (not to be confused with his brother, Samuel Otto Bing, 1850–1905), was a German-French art dealer who lived in Paris as an adult, and wh ...
, and subway posters. When the Cooper-Hewitt showcased its own collections in 1992, it was the longest-running show in the museum's history at the time, lasting 17 months.


Traveling exhibitions

The museum also tours exhibits through the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. The first exhibit they toured was 1978's "Close Observation: Selected Oil Sketches by Frederic E. Church". In 1993, the Cooper-Hewitt created the exhibition "The Power of Maps", which was its first exhibition to be shown on the
National Mall The National Mall is a Landscape architecture, landscaped park near the Downtown, Washington, D.C., downtown area of Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States. It contains and borders a number of museums of the Smithsonian Institu ...
at the S. Dillon Ripley Gallery. The exhibit featured upwards of 200 maps from around the world. William III and
Mary II of England Mary II (30 April 1662 – 28 December 1694) was List of English monarchs, Queen of England, List of Scottish monarchs, Scotland, and Monarchy of Ireland, Ireland with her husband, King William III and II, from 1689 until her death in 1694. Sh ...
were the focus of a 1988 exhibition. An exhibition featuring 16th- and 17th-century decorative arts from Burghley House.


2000s to present

The jewelry of Van Cleef & Arpels was the focus of an exhibition in 2011. That year, artist Sonia Delaunay had a solo show at the museum. The Cooper-Hewitt worked with the
Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill, Minneapolis, Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in ...
, in 2012, to develop "Graphic Design – Now In Production", which showcases
graphic design Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art that involves creating visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdisciplinary branch of ...
that has been created since 2000. An additional exhibition was held in 2012, in light of the museum's closing due to renovations, at the
United Nations Headquarters The headquarters of the United Nations (UN) is on of grounds in the Turtle Bay, Manhattan, Turtle Bay neighborhood of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It borders First Avenue (Manhattan), First Avenue to the west, 42nd Street (Manhattan), 42nd ...
called "Design With the Other 90% Cities", about design and global issues. Other exhibitions at the museum have included Puiforcat silver, wallpaper, the works of Alexander Girard, and
universal design Universal design is the design of buildings, products or environments to make them accessible to people, regardless of age, disability, or other factors. It emerged as a rights-based, anti-discrimination measure, which seeks to create design ...
. In 2015, the museum hosted The Algorithm Auction, the world's first auction of computer algorithms. In Cooper Hewitt's Face Values installation for the LONDON DESIGN BIENNALE 2018, a live facial data became the basis of dynamic graphic images and provocative conversations between humans and machines. The exhibition explored alternative uses of technologies that were typically used for security, surveillance, and behavioural profiling. Curated by Ellen Lupton, the installation was awarded with the LONDON DESIGN BIENNALE EMOTIONAL STATED MEDAL WINNER 2018. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Cooper Hewitt launched a digital exhibition platform. Designed by Linked by Air, the platform allows users to explore objects one by one in thematic sequences, much they would wander around the physical galleries of an exhibition.


Programs


Outreach

The museum's National Design Education Center is sponsored by Target. Ongoing programs for preschoolers on up are offered, along with summer camps, professional development, educator resources, and even a master's program. In 2012, the Cooper Hewitt started work on its Harlem location, designed by Todd Oldham and sponsored by Target, which provided free workshops and programming.


Initiatives

The Cooper Hewitt is home to the National Design Awards. They also support a master's degree program offered in conjunction with
Parsons School of Design The Parsons School of Design is a private art and design college under The New School located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhattan art ...
. In 2006, the Cooper Hewitt and Mayor
Michael Bloomberg Michael Rubens Bloomberg (born February 14, 1942) is an American businessman and politician. He is the majority owner and co-founder of Bloomberg L.P., and was its CEO from 1981 to 2001 and again from 2014 to 2023. He served as the 108th mayo ...
declared October 15–21 National Design Week in New York City. The week focuses on outreach throughout the city, including schools, and organizations across the United States. The museum is free for the week. The museum sponsored a bike rack competition in 2008. The winners of the contest were a part of an exhibition at the museum. In the early 2000s, the Cooper-Hewitt's website displayed only 500 of the 250,000 items in the museum's collection. The website was overhauled in 2006, following a $2 million gift from some of the museum's board members; the updated website provided educational programs and photographs of other objects in the museum's collection. In 2013, the Cooper Hewitt took over the code of Planetary, an iOS app that creates graphic visualizations of songs, and released the
source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...
to the public. Media sources reported at the time that it was the museum's first-ever acquisition of software for exhibition purposes.; After iOS App Store updates rendered the source code obsolete, an Australian developer released a patched version of the app in 2020.


Building

The Cooper Hewitt is located in the Andrew Carnegie Mansion and two adjacent townhouses at 9 and 11 East 90th Street. The 64-room Georgian mansion was completed in 1902 as the home for
Andrew Carnegie Andrew Carnegie ( , ; November 25, 1835August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the History of the iron and steel industry in the United States, American steel industry in the late ...
, his wife Louise, and their daughter
Margaret Carnegie Miller Margaret Carnegie Miller (March 30, 1897 – April 11, 1990) was the only child of industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and Louise Whitfield, and heiress to the Carnegie fortune. A resident of Manhattan, New York City, from 1934 to ...
. The property has a large private garden. The museum acquired the mansion and the house at 9 East 90th Street in 1972, followed by 11 East 90th Street in 1989. When the museum first obtained the house, the first and second floors were used as exhibit space, while the third floor contained the museum's library. The museum closed for a $20 million renovation in 1995, reopening the next year. Another renovation was completed in 2014; that renovation cost $91 million and was the largest in the museum's history, partially financed by the museum endowment. To celebrate the reopening of the museum in 2015, the Cooper Hewitt released a downloadable 3D scan of the building.


Library and study rooms

The museum's library was originally known as the Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Study Center. The library was described in the 1980s as comprising 45,000 volumes (including 4,000 rare copies), over 1.5 million pictures, and various design journals and magazines. Its holdings covered such disparate subjects as interior, industrial, and graphic design; furniture; and theater. The Cooper Hewitt also includes the Drue Heinz Study Center for Drawings and Prints and the Henry Luce Study Room for American Art, which were added to the museum in the 1990s.


Attendance

The Cooper Hewitt is the only Smithsonian museum to charge an admission fee to visitors. The museum receives approximately $500,000 a year in revenue from admissions. The museum recorded about 12,000 monthly visitors, or 144,000 annual visitors, by 2002. , the museum sees approximately 150,000 visitors a year.


Reception and commentary

When the Cooper-Hewitt moved into the Carnegie Mansion, a ''
Newsday ''Newsday'' is a daily newspaper in the United States primarily serving Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island, although it is also sold throughout the New York metropolitan area. The slogan of the newspaper is "Newsday, Your Eye on LI" ...
'' critic called the first exhibition "an unprecedented opportunity to see a museum as a mind-expanding playground". ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'' wrote that it was "the foremost American museum of antique and contemporary design". Both the ''Post'' and ''
The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe,'' also known locally as ''the Globe'', is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes. ''The Boston Globe'' is the oldest and largest daily new ...
'' wrote that the Cooper-Hewitt was similar in scale only to the
Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris The Musée des Arts Décoratifs (, English: ''Museum of Decorative Arts'') is a museum in Paris, France, dedicated to the exhibition and preservation of the decorative arts. Located in the city’s 1st arrondissement, the museum occupies the P ...
, and the
Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...
, London. A critic for ''
Condé Nast Traveler ''Condé Nast Traveler'' is a luxury and lifestyle travel magazine published by Condé Nast. The magazine has won 25 National Magazine Awards. The Condé Nast unit of Advance Publications purchased ''Signature'', a magazine for Diners Club me ...
'' wrote that the "Cooper Hewitt is worth a visit both for the collection and also for the building itself".


Publications


''Design and Social Impact: A Cross-Sectoral Agenda for Design Education, Research and Practice''
(2013). New York: Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.


See also

*
List of museums in New York City This is a list of museums in New York City, which is home to hundreds of cultural institutions and historic sites, many of which are internationally known. Also included are non-profit art galleries, arts centers, and cultural centers with galler ...
* List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City * List of design museums


Notes


References


Further reading

* Dolkart, Andrew. ''Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum: The Andrew and Louise Carnegie Mansion : Art Spaces.'' New York: Scala Publishers (2002). * Ewing, Heather. (2014). ''Life of a Mansion: The Story of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.'' Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York.


External links

*
Collection

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
within
Google Arts & Culture Google Arts & Culture (formerly Google Art Project) is an online platform of high-resolution images and videos of artworks and cultural artifacts from partner cultural organizations throughout the world, operated by Google. It utilizes high-re ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum 1897 establishments in New York City 1968 establishments in New York City Andrew Carnegie Art museums and galleries established in 1897 Art museums and galleries in Manhattan Cooper Union Decorative arts museums in the United States Design museums in New York (state) Design museums in the United States Fifth Avenue Industrial design collections Museums in Manhattan Smithsonian Institution museums Upper East Side