Most of the Smithsonian Institution’s museums are in Washington DC, free to the public, and within easy or extended walking distance of one another. There are a couple of exceptions, and the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum is noteworthy: Unlike the Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, you’ll need to take a train or a plane from DC to NYC to get there, and it’s not free.
Hiding inside an old converted mansion, Cooper Hewitt is a multi-disciplinary design museum with exhibits covering everything from graphic and communication design to industrial design, production design, and numerous intersections between the design and art worlds. If you’re lucky – as we were to see an exhibit featuring the work of artist and stage designer Es Devlin – you may be overwhelmed by the broad exploration of a single designer’s ideas, sketches, and prototypes on display, then tangible examples of how their finished work influenced modern culture. A must-visit for design fans.
