Category Archives: Design and Museums Issues
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, [...]
Cold War Modern Design 1945-70
The lost identity of an exhibition?
La Guerra Fredda - Cold War. Arte e design in un mondo diviso. 1945-1970
Mart (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto)
Rovereto, 28 March to 26 July 2009
(Cold War Modern. Design 1945-1970, Victoria & Albert Museum
London, 25 September 2008 to 11 January 2009)
review by Maddalena Dalla Mura and Gabriele Toneguzzi
After being on show [...]
Multiple voices
Vienna, MAK
Discourses and voices on design are multiplying. Museums are no exceptions.
Consider for instance one European capital city like Vienna, where the MAK - Museum für Angewandte Kunst is acknowledged and renowned as a museum of design, but where other institutions – the Design Forum at Museum Quartier, the Möbel Museum, the Wien Museum and the [...]
Design and Museums Issues #1
What is a museum of design? What defines a museum of design, what distinguishes it from other kinds of museums? How do design museums mean “design”, which fields or objects are they concerned about with their policies and practices of acquisition, research and exhibition? Which cultural value do they attach to design? What approaches do [...]
