Category Archives: Design Museums
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 [...]
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, [...]
Design Museums Statements #17
Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein
«The picture the Vitra Design Museum collections sketch of the history of modern furniture design may be incomplete, but precisely because of its deliberately restricted focus, it is considerably more distinct and coherent than many of the leading collections of publicly operated institutions.»
Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein
ref. Alexander von Vegesack, Origins and Holdings of [...]
Design Museums Statements #16
Design Museum, London
«The Design Museum is one of the world’s leading museums devoted to contemporary design in every form from furniture to graphics, and architecture to industrial design. It is working to place design at the centre of contemporary culture. It demonstrates both the richness of the creativity to be found in all forms of design, and [...]
