Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Located in the landmark Andrew Carnegie mansion, Cooper Hewitt makes design come alive with temporary exhibitions and installations of the permanent collection. Interactive galleries throughout the museum encourage visitors to explore the collection digitally, draw their own designs in the Immersion Room and engage in the design process. Steward of one of the world’s most diverse and comprehensive design collections—over 215,000 objects that range from an ancient Egyptian faience cup dating to about 1100 BC to contemporary 3D-printed objects and digital code—Cooper Hewitt welcomes everyone to discover the importance of design and its power to change the world.

Exhibits

Design and Healing: Creative Responses to Epidemics
What is design’s role in times of crisis? Communities and individuals come together to aid each other, push for change, and create new spaces, objects, and services. This exhibition features architectural case studies and historical narratives, alongside creative responses to the current pandemic.

Designing Peace
Designing Peace explores the unique role design can play in pursuing peace. The exhibition features design projects from around the world that look at ways to create and sustain more durable peaceful interactions—from creative confrontations that challenge existing structures to designs that demand embracing justice and truth in a search for reconciliation.

Botanical Expressions
Botanical Expressions focuses on key figures—Christopher Dresser, Emile Gallé, William Morris, and Louis Comfort Tiffany—whose knowledge of the natural sciences and personal practices of gardening enriched their creative output as designers. A timeline of objects reflects botanicals in form and pattern, highlighting shifting styles across geography and media in textiles, ceramics, glass, wallcoverings, and more.

Immersion Room
Cooper Hewitt’s extraordinary collection of wallcoverings is featured in the Immersion Room. Visitors are invited to select digital images of wallpapers or sketch their own design and then project them onto the walls at full scale to see their impact.

Participation in Museum Day is open to any tax-exempt or governmental museum or cultural venue on a voluntary basis. Smithsonian magazine encourages museum visitation, but is not responsible for and does not endorse the content of the participating museums and cultural venues, and does not subsidize museums that participate.