Cooper Hewitt Unveils Landmark Multi-Year Exhibition: “Design Across Time” Opens at the Carnegie Mansion

NEW YORK — This summer, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum will boldly pull back the curtain on the nation’s design history. Opening on Friday, June 26, the museum will unveil its permanent collection galleries with a monumental, two-year presentation titled “Design Across Time: Exploring the Smithsonian’s Design Collection.”

Spanning the entire first floor of the museum’s historic home inside the landmarked Carnegie Mansion on New York City’s Museum Mile, the exhibition offers an unprecedented thematic deep dive into one of the most comprehensive and diverse design repositories on the planet. Featuring more than 125 works across a staggering array of disciplines—ranging from product and graphic design to fashion, textiles, digital media, wallcoverings, and architecture—the installation promises to redefine how visitors interact with global material culture.

Main Facts and Exhibition Scope

At its core, “Design Across Time” is structured to combat a universal museum reality: the fact that the vast majority of institutional holdings remain hidden from public view in climate-controlled storage facilities. By bringing these treasures out into the daylight for an extended multi-year display featuring rotating objects, Cooper Hewitt is democratizing access to its vast holdings.

The exhibition breaks away from linear, predictable chronological timelines. Instead, it is organized into six creative and thematic clusters that highlight the methodologies employed by makers across millennia:

• Repeat: Examining patterns, mass production, and modularity.
• Transform: Highlighting shifts in materials, forms, and utilities.
• Show Off: Focusing on decorative opulence, craftsmanship, and aesthetic statements.
• Simplify: Tracing minimalist ideals and reductionist problem-solving.
• Tweak: Showcasing iterative design and functional improvements.
• Play: Embracing whimsy, avant-garde experimentation, and conceptual risks.

The objects on display bridge massive gulfs of geography, culture, and time. Visitors will encounter items as ancient as an Egyptian lotus-shaped colored faience cup dating back to circa 1100 BCE, right alongside contemporary marvels such as Toots Zynsky’s 2023 fused and thermo-formed glass vessel, Aurifero II, and David Jonathan Ross’s digital typeface Bungee (2011–2016). Other notable pieces include an 1800 Japanese Noh theater costume in silk metallic brocade, Tone Vigeland’s 1983 avant-garde necklace forged from hammered nails, Sheila Bridges’ iconic Harlem Toile de Jouy wallpaper (2006), and Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s 2019 digital video installation The Substitute.

Chronology and Spatial Design: Architecture Meets Narrative

The physical realization of “Design Across Time” is as much a design triumph as the objects it houses. The dynamic installation layout was architecturally masterminded by the multidisciplinary studio JA Projects, founded by artist and architect Jayden Ali, with striking graphic design executed by the New York creative agency Pacific.

Visitors enter through an introductory concentration of objects anchored in the central gallery, from which the exhibition expands outward along two dramatic axis vitrines cutting across the sequence of first-floor galleries. Eschewing dry, academic arrangements, JA Projects has deployed a rich palette of textures utilizing both traditional and contemporary materials. The exhibition heavily relies on a graphic system of timeless object silhouettes, encouraging viewers to draw visual and conceptual connections across vastly different eras.

This spatial fluidity reflects the foundational thesis of the exhibition: that design is omnipresent, that it serves a vital civic purpose, and that humanity operates collectively as expert users and active participants in the built environment.

Supporting Data and Institutional Infrastructure

The realization of an exhibition of this scale requires immense cross-departmental collaboration and substantial philanthropic backing. “Design Across Time” was organized by a curatorial dream team featuring Matilda McQuaid, acting curatorial director; Susan Brown, acting head of Textiles; Emily Orr, acting head of Product Design and Decorative Arts; and Julie Pastor, curatorial assistant, backed by the entire staff of the curatorial, exhibitions, and director’s offices.

Funding and Philanthropy

The exhibition received anchor support from major benefactors Jon and Shigemi Iwata, alongside Lisa Roberts and David Seltzer. Additional generous contributions were provided by:

• Amita and Purnendu Chatterjee
• The Lily Auchincloss Foundation
• The Terra Foundation for American Art
• The Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Foundation
• Irene Au and Bradley Horowitz
• Chris and Irma Fralic

Crucially, the project received essential funding from the Smithsonian’s “Our Shared Future: 250,” a nationwide initiative fueled by private philanthropy designed to commemorate the United States’ upcoming semiquincentennial while laying the intellectual groundwork for the Smithsonian’s next 250 years.

Beyond the Galleries: AI and Digital Integration

In tandem with the physical exhibition, Cooper Hewitt is preparing to launch a revolutionary online collections platform in the coming months. Designed by Champions Design, with digital strategy, user experience (UX), and development handled by Schema Design, this new digital portal represents one of the first public-facing, AI-integrated experiences deployed across the entire Smithsonian Institution. It will allow global audiences to explore storytelling threads woven through Cooper Hewitt’s catalog of over 215,000 objects, stretching far beyond the physical boundaries of the Carnegie Mansion.

Official Responses and Leadership Vision

Leadership at the museum views this milestone not merely as a rotation of artifacts, but as a crucial cultural intervention during a turbulent historical moment.

"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," stated 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 curatorial and creative teams behind the project emphasize that the exhibition is designed to bridge historical divides. By pairing centuries-old craftsmanship with cutting-edge 21st-century digital coding and sustainable manufacturing, the museum is positioning design as an ongoing, living dialogue rather than a static study of the past.

Implications for the Cultural Sector

“Design Across Time” carries profound implications for how major cultural institutions manage and exhibit their permanent collections in the 21st century.

1. Redefining Accessibility: By committing to an extended, two-year run with rotating objects, Cooper Hewitt is pushing back against the frantic pace of short-term blockbusters. This gives local communities and international visitors alike a deeper, more contemplative space for engagement.
2. Holistic Inclusivity: The museum has maintained a rigorous commitment to accessibility within the galleries. Image descriptions are readily available via an exhibition accessibility webpage and in-person Large Print Label booklets. Furthermore, in-gallery digital interactives are fully equipped with screen-reader capabilities, ensuring barrier-free engagement for visitors with sensory or visual impairments.
3. Cross-Disciplinary Synergy: By spotlighting visionary design partners like JA Projects and Pacific, alongside cutting-edge contributions from global makers, Cooper Hewitt reinforces its identity as an experimental laboratory. JA Projects’ portfolio—which includes major installations at the Royal Academy, the V&A, and the Venice Biennale—brings an international architectural sensibility to the historic Carnegie Mansion, proving that old architectural spaces can successfully house radically contemporary curatorial frameworks.

As Cooper Hewitt continues its mission as America’s design museum within the Smithsonian network, “Design Across Time” stands as a testament to the enduring ingenuity of the human species. Whether through an ancient Egyptian ceramic frit cup or a contemporary neural-network-driven video installation, the message remains clear: design shapes our world, defines our cultures, and holds the key to our collective future.