Multiple Choice: From Sample to Product

This exhibition will examine sample books and other sampling formats as tools for marketing or recording designs and techniques in a wide variety of media. In use since the eighteenth century, sampling formats provide detailed views into the design tastes of their respective eras. Drawn from the Museum's collection, exhibition objects will include sample books of wallcoverings; woven and printed textiles; ribbons, lace and embroidery; sample plates; and drawings and prints showing design alternatives. The exhibition is organized by Lucy Commoner with Matilda McQuaid and Kimberly Randall. Research assistance provided by Phyllis Dillon.

Campana Brothers Select: Works from the Permanent Collection

As the seventh curators in this exhibition series, the Brazilian design team of Fernando and Humberto Campana mined the Museum’s collection departments and chose a diverse group of more than thirty objects, dating from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. The selected pieces, which range from book illustrations and jewelry, to furniture and wallpaper designs, blend unexpected media, layer varied forms, and weave intricate patterns and lines. The exploration of interwoven ideas and unconventional materials has been a hallmark of the Campana Brothers’ work, and the exhibition will feature a new piece of furniture designed by the brothers specifically for Cooper-Hewitt. The newly commissioned work completes their TransPlastic series, which documents the battle between nature and plastic.