Looking Forward/ Looking Back: Recent Acquisitions in 20th- and 21st-Century Design

With more than 250,000 works, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum has one of the most comprehensive collections of design objects in the United States. Through our collection, we explore the continuum of design historically up to the present day. We continue to expand the scope and quality of the collection through new acquisitions and, in the past three years, have made a priority of enhancing our twentieth-century and contemporary collection while complementing our holdings from earlier periods.
The works in this gallery represent a small selection of the objects acquired, highlighting twentieth- and twenty-first-century additions to each of the four curatorial departments: Product Design and Decorative Arts; Textiles; Wallcoverings; and Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design. These diverse objects show the Museum’s commitment to workmanship and handcraft as well as industrial processes. In keeping with the ideals of the Museum’s founders, the Hewitt sisters, we continue to seek out works of enduring beauty and virtuosity while updating their vision with a new focus on design process and innovation in technology and materials.