the museum began as a small collection that now amounts to more than 200,000 decorative-arts objects—wallpaper, fabric samples, cutlery, and much more. The mansion that holds the Cooper-Hewitt collection was built as a private residence, not as a modern museum meant for gala exhibitions and big crowds. And yet ever since the Cooper-Hewitt was annexed by the Smithsonian Institution decades ago, it has had national ambitions. It runs the annual
But the Cooper-Hewitt has yet to discover how to
serve all of its core constituencies. On one side is a
devoted local coterie that expects bread-and-butter
shows on textiles and jewelry; on the other are designers across the country who know of the museum
mainly because of its prestigious awards. And how
to capture a larger share of the general-public audience, both in the hothouse environment of New York’s
cultural scene and on the national stage? The prospect
of balancing these yin-yangy realities, anchored in
the past but reaching toward the future, is a little like
trying to remake an Edwardian costume drama
as The Matrix. In other words, the National Design
Museum has a design problem of its own.
To solve this dilemma, the Cooper-Hewitt hired
a new director last year—a man who has no experience in running a museum. At the same time, he might
be the only person who could—or would—undertake
the redesign of an institution with such large ambitions and profound personality puzzles. The man
pointing from his apartment windows into the distance happens to be Bill Moggridge, the 68-year-old
English industrial and interactive designer who
Could this become
the command center of a
design revolution?
THe MuseuM DireCTor s TaNDs a T THe wiNDows
of his 14th-floor apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and surveys his domain
from a distance. The view is spectacular, with Central Park lying below like a tapestry, unrolling lush shades of green all the way to the towers and manors across town.
“Right there,” he says. “Do you see it? No?”
To be honest, it’s a bit difficult to pick out. “Of course you see the Guggenheim,” he adds
helpfully, motioning to that building’s distinctive round silhouette. “Now look to the left.
There’s the museum’s roof.”
He is pointing toward the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, housed in the stately
Andrew Carnegie mansion on Fifth Avenue and 91st Street. And if it is not easy to figure out
exactly where it stands, it seems even more difficult to truly identify it—to describe not just its
profile but its purpose, too. The Cooper-Hewitt has an identity that has long seemed to border
on the schizophrenic. Its origins go back more than 100 years, to New York’s high society, when
