Category Archives: Design Museums
>Observing [NY] Museums via designobserver
Recently, two articles have appeared in designobserver which – with totally different perspectives (that of a curator and that of a critic and visitor) – look through two renown New York institutions (MoMA and Cooper Hewitt), raising thoughtful reflections on the role and use of contemporary design museums.
The first article is by Barry Bergdoll, [...]
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 [...]
On Exhibition Design
from The Design Journal
In recent years, design museums, design in museums, and museum design are all topics that have attracted growing interest from scholars and professionals: on the one hand, the issues related to the musealisation of design and to design museums, on the other hand the issues raised by exhibition design and by the use of design [...]
Interview with Galit Gaon
Creative Director of the Design Museum, Holon, Israel
photo: © Design Museum Holon
On January 31, 2010, the Design Museum in Holon, Israel, will be inaugurated. Actually, the building will open its doors, while another six weeks will be needed for the opening of the first exhibition.
During my PhD research, on October 27, 2009, I had the opportunity to interview Galit Gaon, who is [...]
Raising the stake for design museums?
Bill Moggridge appointed new director of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
The year 2010 begins with an important news: Bill Moggridge, a founder of the design firm IDEO, has been named director of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, in New York, to be effective by March 2010 – see the “New York Times” article.
While it certainly marks a significant change in the history of [...]
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 [...]
Museums and the Construction of Disciplines
Imagine we could make tabula rasa on Exhibition Road and – one century passed since their official separation in 1909 – start over, using the collections of both the Victoria and Albert and of the Science Museum to build a new museum “of design”. How would we arrange collections? What would we keep under the [...]
