Category Archives: Resources and References
>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, [...]
> 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 [...]
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 [...]
Artefacts Series
learning from science and technology museums
Cases of science and technology museums that have pursued an explicit and strategic policy of collecting and exhibiting industrial arts and design are quite rare. One can mention the Národní technické muzeum (National Technical Museum) in Prague, which comprises collections of Industrial design and Consumer industry – the Museum is currently closed, under renovation, [...]
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, [...]
