SchoolArts - October 2008

Museum Musings
The Cooper-Hewitt,
National Design Museum

Tim Gunn, Chair of the Department of Fashion Design at Parsons

The New School and fashion mentor on the Bravo TV series Project Runway, speaks at the Cooper Hewitt National Deign Museum.

Caroline Payson

Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum is the only museum in the United States devoted exclusively to historic and contemporary design. The museum’s dynamic educational programs provide insight into the ways in which design shapes our lives every day, encouraging us to understand how design can best be used to shape a positive future. The museum’s programs use “design” as a verb, engaging audiences in the design process, and bringing participants closer to design professionals and resources. Through its website and teacher-training programs, teachers and students across the country can access design in their own classrooms.

be announced on October 23, 2008, at the National Design Awards gala in New York City. Lesson plans and activities are available on Cooper-Hewitt’s website, along with a “Design Across America” online map featuring design events taking place across the country.

The museum’s programs
use “design” as a verb,
engaging audiences in the
design process, and bringing
participants closer to design
professionals and resources.

Educator Resource Center Cooper-Hewitt’s Educator Resource Center (ERC) is your one-stop shop for design education resources (www. educatorresourcecenter.org). Teachers can find more than 250 design-focused, multidisciplinary lesson plans. The ERC hosts conversation boards, links to online design-focused resources, and videos of various Cooper-Hewitt professional development and public programs.

National Design Week Every October, Cooper-Hewitt presents the National Design Awards and National Design Week, its largest design education initiative. This year’s festivities take place Octo-

ber 19–25. The museum offers free admission along with several free public programs. New York City area teens are invited to the museum for the Teen Design Fair to learn about design careers from professional designers and design colleges. In 2007, students were thrilled to hear keynote speaker Tim Gunn, from

Project Runway

and meet designers from all fields.

The museum hosts an Educator Open House, inviting teachers to celebrate

National Design Week by learning about Cooper-Hewitt’s many education programs. The museum also honors the year’s most outstanding contributions from the design world through the National Design Awards. See video highlights and keynote speeches at cooperhewitt.org.

Classrooms across the country can also participate in National Design Week. Students and teachers nominate and vote for their favorite designs for the People’s Design Award. Voting begins September 21, 2008, and the winning design will

A City of Neighborhoods Cooper-Hewitt’s A City of Neighborhoods professional development program invites a variety of community leaders to work together to extend the classroom into the community and apply design education to a neighborhood context. For the past two years, teachers from New Orleans,