Every year, a new class of honorees is celebrated at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum: designers, digital pioneers, environmental saviors, and visionaries. Some are industry veterans. Others are just beginning to reshape the field. But as a group, they form a portrait of where American design is headed next.
Interviews & Essays
Once relegated to cheap newsprint created only as casual entertainment to be consumed primarily on Sundays—or alternatively, more transgressive subject matter hidden behind the counter—cartoons and comics have now entered the hallowed halls and white cubes of the high-end art market.
Early eighteenth-century France saw the emergence of Rococo style—an offshoot of the Baroque movement. Also called late baroque, Rococo artwork, architecture, and decor maintained the exuberance and theatricality of the Baroque but diverged with its use of asymmetry, warm-toned pastels, chinoiserie, and excessive florals.
Charles Byrne, born in 1761 in Ulster, Ireland, was over 7 feet and 6 inches tall. By age 21, his health was deteriorating rapidly due to then unknown growth disorders which caught the attention of many in the London medical field where he resided. It was during this decline that John Hunter, surgeon and anatomist, offered to pay Charles for his body after his death. Charles feared the mistreatment of his corpse and, in an attempt to thwart would-be body snatchers, he asked his friends to procure a weighted coffin and bury him at sea.
This list presents a handful of notable, historical moments from the institution's 150-plus years of existence. From the museum’s murky accession of its first artwork in 1870 to the ground-breaking introduction of its Open Access Initiative in 2017, The Met and its artworks have reflected the cultures they came from.
The White House’s recent push to reshape President Donald Trump’s image at the National Portrait Gallery raises questions about who gets to write history and who gets to erase it. A series of interactions between the current administration and this particular Smithsonian institution during the past year has made clear the extent to which Trump is invested in curating his own national story.
In October 1900, a 19-year-old Picasso first arrived in Paris to visit the World’s Fair while simultaneously navigating the road to recognition in the city’s art scene. His first sale—three small canvases depicting bull-fights—sold for just 100 francs to Berthe Weill, an up-and-coming gallerist. Before long, Weill had sold the trio, with a profit of 50 francs, to publisher Adolphe Brisson.
Ironically, the most iconic portrait of the president was never completed.
The Persian Gulf is witnessing unprecedented art fair expansions as major players like Art Basel and Frieze compete for dominance outside slower American and European markets. Despite the Middle East’s reputation for a thin collector base, vast individual wealth and recent government investments in art are drawing auction houses and dealers to the region.
This past February, the Art Institute of Chicago became the recipient of a transformational gift, approximately 2,250 works of French art spanning the 16th through 19th centuries, said to be the largest holding of its kind in the United States. The donors were collectors Jeffrey Horvitz, a private investor, and his wife, Carol, a trustee of the Art Institute.
