December
8, 2006 - July 29, 2007
Design
Life Now: National Design Triennial 2006, with work by COMA
and Rem Koolhaas at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
The National
Design Triennial is an ongoing exhibition series at the Smithsonian’s
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Inaugurated in 2000,
the Triennial seeks out innovative work from across the fields
of product design, architecture, furniture, film, graphics,
new technologies, animation, science, medicine and fashion.
Called Design Life Now, the 2006 Triennial presents experimental
projects, emerging ideas, major buildings, and new products
and media created by 87 designers and firms from 2003 to 2006.
The exhibition features work by designers of any nationality
who are producing work in the U.S. as well as American-born
designers who are working abroad. It includes work by among
others COMA (Marcel Hermans & Cornelia Blatter) and OMA/Rem
Koolhaas. The exhibition catalog Design Life Now is designed
by COMA.
About
the curators:
Barbara
Bloemink
Barbara Bloemink began her tenure as Curatorial Director of
Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution
in 2002. Describing Dr. Bloemink as a “curator of distinction
with vast experience in museum management,” Cooper-Hewitt
Director Paul Warwick Thompson charged the curatorial director
with leading the staff in creating an innovative exhibition
schedule, and offering “an imaginative and challenging
discourse between our historic and contemporary artifacts”
as befitting the country’s National Design Museum.
As the former Director and Chief Curator of the Hudson River
Museum, The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, the
Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, and, as Managing Director
of the Guggenheim Hermitage and Guggenheim Las Vegas Museums,
Bloemink has made numerous and diverse contributions to international
art scholarship and museums. She has authored numerous books,
including Design ∫ Art: Functional Objects from Donald
Judd to Rachel Whiteread; Comic Release: Negotiating Identity
for a New Generation; Michael Lucero Sculpture, 1976-1995; James
Croak: 20 Years of Sculpture; and The Life and Art of Florine
Stettheimer; and has written more than 25 articles and essays
for anthologies including Women in Dada, Design Life Now, and
Decorative Excess and Women Artists in the Early Modernist Era.
Bloemink has lectured widely, served on many international panels,
and has organized more than eighty museum exhibitions, including,
Yinka Shonibare Selects Works from the Permanent Collections;
Re-Righting History: Contemporary African-American Art; The
Egyptian Movement in American Decorative Arts; Constructing
Reality: Contemporary Photography; and she co-organized the
Florine Stettheimer Manhattan Fantastica exhibition at the Whitney
Museum of American Art.
Bloemink’s academic background is considerable. She earned
her doctorate at Yale, specializing in international 20th Century
art and design, with minors in African-American and Latin American
Art. Her Masters of Philosophy, also taken at Yale, focused
upon 17th- through 19th- century American painting and decorative
arts. Bloemink also completed a Master’s Degree at the
Institute of Fine Arts of New York University, focusing on 17th-
through 19th- century European art; and earned her bachelor
of arts degree from Stanford University.
Barbara Bloemink lives in New York City.
Brooke
Hodge
Brooke Hodge is Curator of Architecture and Design at The Museum
of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. From 1991-2000 she was Director
of Exhibitions and Publications at the Harvard University Graduate
School of Design, where she also held the positions of Adjunct
Curator of Architecture at the Fogg Art Museum and Assistant
Dean of Arts Programs at the Graduate School of Design. She
received her master’s degree in architectural history
from the University of Virginia. She has organized exhibitions
of the work of architects Frank Gehry, Gio Ponti, Peter Eisenman,
Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster, Kazuyo Sejima, Enric Miralles, theater
designer and artist Robert Wilson, car designer J Mays, and
fashion designer Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons, among
others. She is currently working on a major thematic exhibition
that will examine the intersections and overlaps between fashion
and architecture. Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion
and Architecture opens at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los
Angeles, in November 2006.
Ellen
Lupton
Curator of Contemporary Design at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design
Museum, Smithsonian Institution, since 1992, during her tenure
Lupton has organized such major books and exhibitions as Skin:
Substance, Surface and Design (2002), National Design Triennial:
Design Culture Now (2000), National Design Triennial: Inside
Design Now (2003), Graphic Design in the Mechanical Age: Selections
from the Merrill C. Berman Collection (1999), Mixing Messages:
Graphic Design in Contemporary Culture (1996), The Avant-Garde
Letterhead (1996), and Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines
from Home to Office (1993).
Also active in academia, Lupton serves as director of the Graphic
Design MFA Program at Maryland Institute, College of Art in
Baltimore. Recent books include Thinking with Type (2004) and
D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself (2006). In 1996, she published with
J. Abbott Miller Design/Writing/Research: Writing on Graphic
Design, a collection of essays about design theory and history.
Lupton’s articles have also been seen in such periodicals
as Design Issues, Design Review, Print, I.D., Eye, Emigre, and
Assemblage; and in the books Design Discourse (ed. Victor Margolin),
Graphic Design in America (ed. Mildred Friedman), and The Edge
of the Millennium (ed. Susan Yelavich). She is a regular contributor
to AIGA Voice. Ellen Lupton was voted one of American’s
top design innovators by I.D. Magazine (1993), presented with
the Chrysler Design Award (1993), and honored with The New York
Magazine Award for her work in shaping the cultural life of
New York City (1997).
Matilda
McQuaid
As deputy curatorial director and head of the Textiles department
at the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum,
Matilda McQuaid proposes and organizes national and international
exhibitions and publications and oversees one of the premier
textile collections in the world—including more than 30,000
textiles produced over 2,000 years, beginning with the Han Dynasty
of China.
Since joining Cooper-Hewitt in 2001 as the exhibitions curator
and head of the Textiles department, McQuaid has curated a number
of critically acclaimed exhibitions including Josef + Anni Albers:
Designs for Living (2004) and Extreme Textiles: Designing for
High Performance (2005). Currently, McQuaid is playing a lead
role in the creation of the new Online National Design Museum,
and will be leading an exhibition on contemporary Chinese architecture
scheduled for 2008.
McQuaid came to Cooper-Hewitt after a 15-year tenure at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York, where she began as a curatorial
assistant in 1987 and eventually became associate curator in
1995. At MoMA, she curated more than 30 exhibitions, including
Shigeru Ban: A Paper Arch, Structure and Surface: Contemporary
Japanese Textiles, and Lilly Reich: Designer and Architect.
She is an accomplished author and editor on art, architecture,
and design, with many books and articles to her credit, including
Shigeru Ban Architect (Phaidon Press, 2003); Envisioning Architecture:
Drawings from the Museum of Modern Art (The Museum of Modern
Art, 2002); Structure and Surface: Contemporary Japanese Textiles
(The Museum of Modern Art, 1998); Architecture: A Place for
Women (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989); and, Extreme Textiles:
Designing for High Performance (Princeton Architectural Press,
2005).
McQuaid holds a master’s degree in architectural history
from the University of Virginia and a bachelor’s degree
in art history from Bowdoin College.
Contact:
Press
Department
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
2 East 91st Street
New York, NY 10128
Tel.: 212-849-8420
cooperhewittpress@si.edu
www.cooperhewitt.org
