NEW YORK, NY.- This summer, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum will unveil its permanent collection galleries with a landmark presentation, “Design Across Time: Exploring the Smithsonian’s Design Collection.” Opening Friday, June 26, and on view for an extended, two-year display, “Design Across Time” will showcase a selection drawn from the national design collection of Cooper Hewitt, the New York City-based Smithsonian museum entirely devoted to design. Installed throughout the first floor of the museum’s Carnegie Mansion, the exhibition provides visitors with a new thematic take on one of the most diverse and comprehensive design collections in the world.

“Cooper Hewitt holds the nation’s design collection, a public resource that belongs to all and that, as is common across museums worldwide, is largely kept in storage,” said Maria Nicanor, director of the museum. “Expanding access for all to this rich repository of ideas—at a time when creativity and design can help us navigate uncertainty and complexity—is urgent and inspired the idea to bring this selection into view for an extended period.”

The multi-year installation of the permanent collection, which will feature rotations of objects throughout its duration, brings together more than 125 works across multiple design disciplines including product and graphic design, fashion, textiles, digital design, wallcoverings and architecture. “Design Across Time” will include 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 dynamic installation is designed by JA Projects with graphic design by Pacific. From an introductory concentration of objects anchored in the central gallery, the exhibition extends through two dramatic axis vitrines that cut across the sequence of first-floor galleries. Combining a rich palette of textures from traditional and contemporary materials and leaning heavily on a graphic system of timeless collection object silhouettes, the display escapes traditional chronological readings. Instead, the presentation provides thematic groupings of a global collection that spans geographies, materials and time periods, ranging from an ancient Egyptian lotus-shaped cup to the recently acquired Toots Zynsky vessel, Aurifero II (2023).





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

Organized in six thematic clusters, the exhibition further explores some of the many approaches involved in the creative process and often utilized by designers, including actions like Repeat, Transform, Show Off, Simplify, Tweak and Play.

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.

Throughout the span of the exhibition, Cooper Hewitt will offer an extended lineup of talks, panels and hands-on workshops by leading designers and cultural leaders, from deep dives into the exhibition’s themes to an analysis of cultural stewardship and what it means to preserve and interpret national museums and collections around the world.