Could it be that Acquired! Shaping the National Design Collection at Cooper Hewitt in New York City is more than just an exhibition - perhaps a conversation? Displayed on the second floor of the iconic Carnegie Mansion and surrounded by the carved wooden interiors and elaborate plaster ceilings are over 150 works from the museum’s collection. While most pieces were collected since 2017, the exhibition (on view from March 16 - August 25, 2024) also includes some key works representing Cooper Hewitt’s legacy of collecting. However, the moment you step into the show, you are met with a contradiction between the traditional and contemporary.

It is natural for exhibition goers to relate the space to the collection displayed. Acquired! challenges that notion within this context. Amid the mansion’s classical architectural features, the curatorial team places some of the most celebrated designs of the contemporary world. This contrast presents the initial ground for the question that the exhibition asks, “What does it mean to be a design museum today?”

The 3D-printed model of Coronavirus particle, 2020, illustrated by Alissa Eckert and Dan Higgins was the first piece that grabbed my attention. Even without a label, one can identify it. This piece represents not the past, but a reality we have all lived through. Beside it sits the Lotus-shaped Cup (Egypt), circa 1100 BCE. It is quite normal for anyone to ponder why one would place an old Egyptian artefact alongside a work reminiscent of COVID-19. While the striking turquoise blue-coloured cup might seem a misfit placed alongside a representation of something that brought the world to a standstill not too long ago, according to ancient Egyptian belief, the lotus motif seen around the cup is symbolic of life, death and rebirth. Next to each other, the two works stand for different times, cultures and materiality, while representing stories of struggles and rebirth. This is where the concept of collecting acquires a new meaning. Leading us to contemplate how we obtain and what that signifies from the curator's perspective.

Every time a museum ‘acquires’ a piece into its permanent collection, there arise questions. Primarily, these examine the importance of the obtained artefact, what influenced the work’s collecting, the process and research behind its artist/designer, its worth and ultimately, how it matters. While one may assume that it is the critics and audiences who generally present these questions before everyone else, the curators certainly do—might not always be a ‘why’ but assuredly a ‘what.’ This idea and system of placing the what over why encompasses the theme of this exhibition.

In conjunction with Acquired!, Cooper Hewitt held a panel discussion with experts from a range of collecting roles to discuss how and why they collect. In that, Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, curator of contemporary design at Cooper Hewitt talked about how they came to acquire product designer Lucia DeRespinis’ lamp. The story starts with Cameron seeing a version of the lamp design in an exhibition at the NYCxDESIGN festival a few years back and recognising its form. But when she saw DeRespinis’s name under it, she started researching, leading her to understand DeRespinis’ contribution to the American design landscape better. The pendant lamp now sits in the national design collection. DeRespinis, who also designed the Dunkin’ Donuts logo in 1976 (but is often mentioned alongside George Nelson Associates) now has an important documented presence in the history of industrial design.

Acquired! engages in more such conversations and viewpoints, diving deeper into what it is that we are collecting and inevitably, how. With nearly every object, the curatorial team conveys a strong feeling of necessity, hinted at by the exclamation mark in the exhibition’s title. A closer look at each piece perhaps reveals why it holds a place in the national collection.

What design meant in the late 19th century when Cooper Hewitt’s collection was started is not what design means now. That’s why our collection continues to grow and change as new works and ideas that better define our times are added to it. – Maria Nicanor, director, Cooper Hewitt

“The entirety of the collection, with both historic and new acquisitions interwoven together, allows Cooper Hewitt to tell more nuanced stories about who we are. Sometimes those stories will embrace the past and sometimes they will confront it to help inform our possible futures,” said Maria Nicanor, director of Cooper Hewitt.

For me, Tobias Wong’s Ballistic Rose Brooch, 2004, made of bulletproof nylon, is an iconic piece of critical design. In a context where gun violence in the United States remains alarmingly high and situated, artworks that address or respond to it become a key part of the documentation. While Nike’s Pro-Hijab might seem like a casual piece of clothing for the current generation, seeing it displayed inside a glass case at a national design museum offers a deeper, more pertinent perspective into the historic events that led to its creation.

Eino Korkala and Daniel Coull’s Variable Font, Climate Crisis, 2020, is a digital typeface that gained much attention when it was released because of its graphical representation of a world concern. When it becomes part of a national collection, it creates a more relevant discussion that the artwork is aiming to communicate. At that point, it is not about the typeface design but about the climate crisis. Ronald Rael and Virginia Fratello’s 3D-printed container might appear as a small piece of product design, but on inspection, one is introduced to the vast experimentation they are undertaking with 3D-printing technology and traditional adobe construction, promoting more sustainability in architecture.

Another peculiar characteristic of the pieces outlining Acquired! is that they do not follow the conventional collecting criteria revolving around the type of art and the geography it belongs to. The acquisitions follow a purpose which is much bigger than collecting. In different sections such as ‘Confronting the Past’ and ‘New Ways Forward’, the displayed works are categorised according to the impacts they made in society instead of their genre. Many pieces were acquired through Cooper Hewitt’s Responsive Collecting Initiative (RCI), a project co-chaired by contemporary design curators Andrea Lipps and Cameron, aiming to mark the museum’s commitment to collecting objects that tell design stories about the different historic moments of contemporary times.

At first glance, Acquired! might seem like a filler exhibition – a display of Cooper Hewitt’s collection before the most anticipated Smithsonian Design Triennial opens – but its underlying theme dispels a complex conversation. It is not simply about the role of a design museum, but what and how they collect. This inquiry mostly arises when headlines about museums returning looted artefacts, cultural appropriation of sacred relics and ethical controversies about museum boards are published. This discussion on what is being collected, preserved, protected and presented becomes important. Everyone then has opinions, but what after this news subsides?

This is where Acquired! reaches an intriguing position, in its spotlighting of a newer narrative of collecting, one that is more about social responsibility, representation and relevance. What happens when you examine a potential acquisition, what it stands for, instead of merely where is it from, who made it, which year and what material it takes form in? Instead of fighting for provenance, why don’t we look into the need for a specific piece to be collected? Is the interest in a ‘historic’ piece a Western obsession with BIPOC creations or does it truly shape history and consequently, society? This transition in questioning about collecting comes into play when we ask the most important question – who are we collecting for?

‘Acquired! Shaping the National Design Collection’ is on view from March 16 - August 25, 2024, at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, United States.