Category Archives: Design and Museums Issues
> Design Failures and Museums
«… designers [...] are judged more by their hits than by their misses. [...] Designing without fault is impossible,» wrote Henry Petroski in his Small Things Considered. Why There Is No Perfect Design, 2003.
Many of those who are interested in design and museums, sooner or later, wonder how a show dedicated to the design failures [...]
>Design archives and Archiving design
Archiving Design Organisations: A Design Archives seminar
6 June 2011, University of Brighton
Curators, scholars and students meet on June 6, 2011, to discuss the issues of “Archiving Design Organisations”. Funded by the Design History Society, the seminar is held at the University of Brighton, whose Design Archives hold the archives design organisations such as Design Council, [...]
Museums, Design and Social Change
“Social change” seems to be the key word, and key issue, for design museums.
The next European Museum Network Conference promoted by the Vitra Design Museum (MUSCON 2010), taking place in London at the end of October, not only aims at enhancing and improving connections and cooperative relationships between museums of design, art and architecture, but [...]
>Reflections on a design museum for Japan
Journalist Edan Corkill, in “The Japan Times”, offers some reflections on what a design museum in Japan could be. Writing about the exhibition Design: ’60s vs. ’00s, organized by D-8, the Japan Design Association Meeting, held at Mikimoto Hall in Tokyo’s Ginza district, Corkill not only describes the sections of it but reports extracts of [...]
Design, childhood, museums
V&A Childhood Museum, London
I recently visited the V&A Museum of Childhood in London, Bethnal Green. Compared to “children museums”, where the participatory quality and the active engagements of kids is predominant, the Museum of Childhood has a more complex nature due to its history and to the history of its collections. In fact, the museum in Bethnal Green [...]
Industrial Design at the Canada Science
and Technology Museum, Ottawa
© photo Canada Science and Technology Museum, Ottawa
In 2009 the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa started a programme and strategy to collect and exhibit industrial design. While the programme is still under development, some points seem to be quite clear. As far as can be learned from the considerations made by the curatorial [...]
The strange case of Mr. Schwarz
Could museums of design help changing his mind?
In year 2000, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York organized and presented Design Culture Now, the first edition of the triennial event which aims at providing «present critical overviews of key developments in American design» (National Design Triennial). In the first edition, more than eighty projects were selected «to highlight the current blurring [...]
Designing Modern Germany
some considerations on the role of museums
Designing Modern Germany by Jeremy Aynsley, published this year, is a text full of information and based on an important set of sources and references. The study is lead by the will of the author to understand and make clear how «cultural difference can be acutely perceived through design» (ibid., p. 22). Concluding the Introduction, [...]
