Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial
TheUnseen (London, England, United Kingdom, founded 2012): Lauren Bowker (British, b. 1985); Jacket, from the AIR collection, 2014; Leather, wind-reactive ink. Copyright: Jonny Lee Photography © TheUnseen
Game, Monument Valley, 2014 video game on tablet (ipad 4th gen or later tk). Courtesy of ustwo Games.
Skirt And Top, from Fall / Winter 2014–15 Haute Couture collection, 2014 tulle degradé, silk taffeta. Courtesy of Giambattista Valli.
Wallpaper, from Archives collection, 2014 non-woven wallpaper, matte finish. Courtesy of NLXL. s-e-1736
LT04 COLOUR Floor Light, 2014 powder-coated steel, laminated glass. 75.2015.1a/c
Sculptures, from the Afreaks series, 2015 glass beads, wire, wood, mixed fiber stuffing, and cast bronze. Courtesy of R & Company, New York and The Haas Brothers, Los Angeles.
Cabinet, from Engineering Temporality series, 2012 welded and burned steel rings. Courtesy of Tuomas Markunpoika.
Atmospheric Reentry, from Atmospheric Reentry collection, 2013–2014 acetate, acrylic, silver, plastic. Courtesy of Maiko Takeda.
From the iPhone to the Tesla Model S, beauty and technology often go hand-inhand in Silicon Valley. Here, the aesthetic appeal of great design is a strategic imperative: an object’s “look and feel” provides a leading, competitive edge and can be as spectacular as the function within. Today, in fact, there are more digital and tech-product designers working in the San Francisco Bay Area than anywhere else in the world. We are an important hub of design thinking for the twenty-first century.
Amidst this widespread public interest in the new frontiers of design, the San Jose Museum of Art will present the exhibition Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial. The exhibition comprises 280 works by fifty-seven international, cutting-edge designers from twenty-seven countries, including Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, Iran, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, and the United States.
Projects range from experimental prototypes and interactive games to high-tech fashion and architecture made possible by new material technologies; from forms enabled by advanced digital systems to fantastical creatures imagined and handmade by a cottage industry of South African beadworkers. Imagine, for example, a couture jacket that turns color based on the air temperature. Across the board, this exhibition is about beauty—and its uplifting, surprising, and inspiring impact on our lives. This exhibition lets visitors experience the delight of unfettered creativity that is simultaneously functional and smart, yet equally human, elegant, and witty.
What comes to mind when you hear the word “beauty?” The designers in Beauty answer this question in myriad ways. Simon Haas of the Haas Brothers says, “It is like finding a pattern among chaos.” The designer Hechizoo offers, “When you see beauty, you have this moment of silence, of stillness.” Fashion designer Giambattista Valli observes that, “Beauty surprises you; it can make you dizzy or erode you like an obsession.” The exhibition explores beauty through seven descriptive categories: extravagant, intricate, ethereal, transgressive, emergent, elemental, and transformative. These themes will serve as springboards to engage designers, artists, architects, engineers, and futurists (as well as the general public) in San Jose, Silicon Valley, and the Bay Area.
The Cooper Hewitt has published a 276-page catalogue with 274 images. It includes interviews with all of the designers and a section outlining the project’s curatorial DNA, including the essay “Beauty as User Experience,” by co-curators Andrea Lipps and Ellen Lupton.
See more at the Cooper Hewitt’s website
| Advisory Committee | |
| Verda Alexander Studio O + A, San Francisco Yves Béhar fuseproject, San Francisco Cari Borja the art of gathering, Oakland Amy Critchett Art + Audience, San Francisco John Danzer Munder Skiles, Los Angeles and New York Connie Hwang San Jose State University, Design Department Brooke Hodge Palm Springs Museum |
Pamela Hornik Palo Alto Jane Metcalfe San Francisco Jennifer Morla Morla Design, San Francisco Chris and Ben Ospital Modern Appealing Clothing (MAC), San Francisco Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee JOHNSTONMARKLEE, Los Angeles Louis Schump Rapt Studio, San Francisco |
| Host Committee | |
| Elaine Cardinale Casey and Jack Carsten Jacquie and William Faulkner Tad Freese and Brook Hartzell Muni Fry David and Pamela Hornik Richard A. Karp and Sarah Roberts |
Siobhan Kenney Julie Lata Sho-Joung Kim-Wechsler Jim McManis and Sara Wigh Alyce and Michael Parsons Theres and Dennis Rohan Dorothy Saxe |
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| Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial was organized by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. | |
| The presentation of Beauty at the San Jose Museum of Art is sponsored by | |
| Richard A. Karp Charitable Foundation Applied Materials Foundation Walter and Karla Goldschmidt Foundation |
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| Additional sponsorship support is provided by | |
| Casey and Jack Carsten Tad and Jackson Freese Muni Fry David and Pamela Hornik |
Sho-Joung Kim-Wechsler McManisFaulkner Alyce and Michael Parsons/Universal Style International Theres and Dennis Rohan |
| In-kind sponsorship is provided by | |
| BrightSign Samsung Electronics America |
Sprout Pro by HP Troxell Communications, Inc. |