WILLI SMITH: STREET COUTURE @COOPER HEWITT

Entry to Willi Smith: Street Couture at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Venture through the chain-link fence and step into a legacy that was lost two decades ago. Though a seemingly unusual aesthetic for the Cooper Hewitt, Willi Smith: Street Couture brings forward a retrospective of the most commercially successful Black American designer and cultural catalyst of the 20th century. With a modern twist, the exhibit "surveys Smith's pathbreaking imagination of an inclusive, collaborative and playful new society" [Cooper Hewitt]. Curator Alexandra Cunningham Cameron--Curator of Contemporary Design and Hintz Secretarial Scholar--successfully shines the spotlight on an under-appreciated designer whose success was largely eclipsed by the popular European designers of his time. Keep reading for a look inside...

BEAUTY--COOPER HEWITT DESIGN TRIENNIAL

Beauty--Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial; Dress by Sanne van Winden + Suzanne va der Aa + Michiel Schuurman, Posters by Vlisco Netherlands

Beyond the beholder, beauty is a measure of elegance, a means of attraction and a stimulating show of grace. In an expansive display, Beauty--Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial is the fifth in an annual showcase of contemporary art. 63 designers explore 7 categorizations of beauty in expressions of Extravagant, Intricate, Ethereal, Transgressive, Emergent and Elemental. Taping into innovative representations,"Beauty is visceral and embodied, not just visual. Beauty strikes the senses. It erupts from sensual invention and it adds endless value to the world we inhabit [source]." Keep reading for a look inside the exhibit...

THOM BROWNE SELECTS @ COOPER HEWITT

 #ThomBrowneSelects at the Cooper Hewitt 

Inside the converted Carnegie mansion, Thom Browne takes the reigns as the 13th guest curator in Cooper Hewitt's Selects series this March. Turning artifacts into an artistic installation, Brown uncovers 50+ European frames and mirrors for display alongside auspices of presentations past. Suitably apropos, the archived antiques hang atop floor-to-ceiling laser-engraved holographic wallpaper by Osborne & Little. Keep reading for a closer look...