Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is unveiling its permanent collection galleries with Design Across Time: Exploring the Smithsonian’s Design Collection . The landmark presentation showcases a selection of 125 works drawn from Cooper Hewitt’s collection installed throughout the first floor of the museum’s Carnegie Mansion. The exhibition provides visitors with a new thematic take on the collection and expands access to its vast repository of historic and contemporary design, including significant works newly brought out of storage, recent acquisitions on public display for the first time, and canonical objects of American and global design history.

The exhibition is rooted in the idea that design is everywhere, that it serves a civic purpose and that from small objects to larger systems, everyone is an expert user and active participant of the built environment.

Cooper Hewitt has been collecting design since its founding in 1897. The national collection now has more than 215,000 objects spanning six continents and thirty centuries, including product design, architecture, graphic design, fashion and textiles, wallcoverings, and digital and interaction design. From sketches and prototypes to finished products, the collection continues to evolve to represent new areas and ideas of our time, reminding us that design is constantly around us.

This multi-year installation of the permanent collection, which will feature rotations of objects throughout its duration, is organized in six thematic clusters representing some of the many approaches involved in the creative process and often utilized by designers:

Enhance your visit with insights into the design process from designers and other experts featured in the exhibition . View the Bloomberg Connects guid e online or in the free arts and culture app .

The dynamic installation is designed by JA Projects with graphic design by Pacific. From an introductory concentration of objects anchored in the central gallery, the exhibition extends through two dramatic axis vitrines that cut across the sequence of first-floor galleries. Combining a rich palette of textures from traditional and contemporary materials and leaning heavily on a graphic system of timeless collection object silhouettes, the display escapes traditional chronological readings. Instead, the presentation provides thematic groupings of a global collection that spans geographies, materials, and time periods, ranging from an ancient Egyptian lotus-shaped cup to the recently acquired Toots Zynsky vessel, Aurifero II (2023).