designed the first laptop computer; cofounded the
influential design and business-consulting company
Ideo; won the Cooper-Hewitt’s National Design Award
for Lifetime Achievement, in 2009; and is described
nearly universally as one of the design world’s gurus
and elder statesmen. It is difficult to find a high-profile designer who was not at least a little surprised
by the Cooper-Hewitt’s choice of Moggridge. It is also
difficult to find a high-profile designer who is not
rooting for him. And if he succeeds in remaking the
museum, it will be a vindication—using an improbably large case study—of what he most believes in:
the application of “design thinking” to any problem.
“Bill’s appointment signals a different kind of
museum,” says Richard Kurin, the Smithsonian’s
undersecretary for history, art, and culture, who led
the search committee for the Cooper-Hewitt’s new
director. “Museums originally were founded as 19th-
century institutions. Well, now we exist in a different
kind of world. A hundred-thousand people came to
an exhibit? Well, a hundred-thousand people watching a TV program is very little. A hundred-thousand
people watching a You Tube video is puny! And so I
think the idea is, How do we take the stuff of the museum, the visceral experience of the object, and somehow translate that to other forms of media? We
haven’t figured that out yet. If anyone can do it, I think
it’s Bill Moggridge.” 1
high
soCiet Y
Meets high
design
the cooper-hewitt,
then AnD now
i T woulD Be HarD eNougH to try to create a new
museum for the 21st century from scratch. But the
expectations for the Cooper-Hewitt are even more
daunting. After decades spent curating treasures and
artifacts, the aim now is to command a much more
assertive role—to completely own and articulate not
just the history of design, and the narrative of design’s
importance, but also the application of design as a
tool for education and for business. To propose to do
all this from within a Gilded Age mansion on the
Upper East Side that has yet to shake off a reputation
for fustiness might sound implausible. But what the
Cooper-Hewitt’s most committed boosters want is
nothing less than for the institution to become the
voice of, and the voice for, design in the United States.
This is where Moggridge comes in. “I don’t know
about museums,” he says with typical guilelessness.
“But at least I know design.” Moggridge is not an
academic or an artiste. He moved with his family to 5
4
1, 2 Today’s National Design Museum
has its roots in the eccentric 19th-century
collection of sisters sarah and eleanor
Hewitt, pictured in Venice in 1890 with their
sister amy; an 1888 portrait of eleanor
3 smithsonian institute secretary g. wayne
Clough with First lady Michelle obama and
Moggridge at the 2010 National Design
awards luncheon at the white House
4 Moggridge and risD president John
Maeda at the 2010 National Design awards
gala, the museum’s big annual fundraiser
5 rodarte founders Kate and laura Mulleavy
with Vogue editor anna wintour at the
cocktail party for the Cooper-Hewitt’s
rodarte exhibit in 2010
coUrtesy of cooper-he witt, national design mUseUm, smithsonian institUtion (he witts); cooper-he witt, national design mUseUm, smithsonian institUtion/
art resoUrce n.y. (eleanor); chance yeh/ patrickmcmUllan.com (white hoUse, cooper-hewitt gala); will ragoZZino/ patrickmcmUllan.com (rodarte party)
