Design Across Time: Exploring the Smithsonian’s Design Collection

 

June 26, 2026, through October 22, 2028

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum: 2 East 91st Street

 

 

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is unveiling its permanent collection galleries with Design Across Time: Exploring the Smithsonian’s Design Collection. 

 

The landmark presentation showcases a selection of 125 works drawn from Cooper Hewitt’s collection installed throughout the first floor of the museum’s Carnegie Mansion. The exhibition provides visitors with a new thematic take on the collection and expands access to its vast repository of historic and contemporary design, including significant works newly brought out of storage, recent acquisitions on public display for the first time, and canonical objects of American and global design history.

 

The exhibition is rooted in the idea that design is everywhere, that it serves a civic purpose and that from small objects to larger systems, everyone is an expert user and active participant of the built environment.

 

Cooper Hewitt has been collecting design since its founding in 1897. The national collection now has more than 215,000 objects spanning six continents and thirty centuries, including product design, architecture, graphic design, fashion and textiles, wallcoverings, and digital and interaction design. From sketches and prototypes to finished products, the collection continues to evolve to represent new areas and ideas of our time, reminding us that design is constantly around us. 

 

This multi-year installation of the permanent collection, which will feature rotations of objects throughout its duration, is organized in six thematic clusters representing some of the many approaches involved in the creative process and often utilized by designers:

 

Play and Tweak to experiment and iterate ideas 

Repeat elements to reinforce messages 

Transform materials into sustainable solutions 

Show off craftsmanship to create objects of beauty 

Simplify complex shapes and information   

 

The works on view in each section include:

 

In Repeat, Vlisco’s Style Stiletto textile (2011) demonstrates repetition as a key aesthetic feature of pattern design.

In Transform, Stephen Burks’ Roping Stool (2017) made from rope and upholstery trimmings from production waste reflects creative new applications for common or discarded materials.

In Show Off, the Royal jewel cabinet (1825–26), a gift from Charles X of France to Francis I of Naples in 1830, showcases technical innovation, masterful craftsmanship and artistic vision.

In Simplify, Art Sims’ 1992 film poster for Spike Lee’s biographical film Malcolm X focuses on the single letter “X,” removing color and increasing scale to achieve bold impact.

In Tweak, a rarely seen drawing of chalice designs by Giuseppe Barberi from the late 18th century reveals how most designs are the results of small iterative changes.

In Play, the Bungee digital typeface (2011–16) invites users to play and personalize text by integrating elements of urban signage such as color, outlines, banners and background shapes.

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s “The Substitute,” an immersive video and sound installation that digitally resurrects the extinct male Northern white rhino using artificial intelligence and state-of-the-art visual effects, will be on view on the second floor as a featured selection from Cooper Hewitt’s Digital collection, which collects born-digital design.

The Substitute is on view as part of Design Across Time.

https://www.cooperhewitt.org