Beauty – Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial

Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial  is the fifth installment of the museum’s signature contemporary design exhibition series. With a focus on aesthetic innovation, Beauty celebrates design as a creative endeavor that engages the mind, body, and senses. Curated by Andrea Lipps, Assistant Curator, and Ellen Lupton, Senior Curator of Contemporary Design, the exhibition features more than 250 works by 63 designers and teams from around the globe, and is organized around seven themes: extravagant, intricate, ethereal, transgressive, emergent, elemental, and transformative.

The exhibition is installed on the first and third floors of the museum and offers an immersive, multisensory experience that guides the visitor through a dramatic procession of the individual works.  With projects ranging from experimental prototypes and interactive games to fashion ensembles and architectural interventions, Beauty presents works of astonishing form and surprising function while examining the essential question: “Why beauty now?”