Uneven spring break schedules still allow for half-days.

We meet in front of the Victoria’s Secret by Penn Station, after she can’t find the gift for her mom and then we decide to get food before moving on. I’m indecisive as usual so we go into a restaurant with flowers, and order too much after our server tells us that one of the soups is “very small” (it’s not). We both have similar decisions to make regarding graduation, but otherwise our lives have continued as per usual. We finish our food and take the ride uptown to the Cooper Hewitt.

As we’re walking the few blocks to the museum we pass “the Gossip Girl school.” (I’ve never seen Gossip Girl but she’s pretty sure that it’s the one.) It’s nice enough outside; nothing like the sunshine that comes the following day, but relatively warm. We check our coats and umbrella after entering, get our tickets, and receive these high-tech pens that let us “save” the pieces we like. We don’t know quite how the pens work but just holding them feels cool.

Turning to go into the first exhibit room, we’re met with swaths of fabric suspended from the ceiling. The exhibit is on material conservation and cutting down on excess waste and the patterns on the shirts are nice, even though “design,” the focus of the museum, is a bit beyond me. I try to snap photos that encompass the whole effect of the room, but fail. If I used my Instagram, I might’ve posted some of those.

On the right of the room is a mostly orange shawl adorned with shimmering circles, and farther on hang two others; despite the overcast sky, they all still manage to capture the light coming in through the windows, and I’m reminded of a piece we’re reading in class — though it’s far from the same thing. It takes a moment of fiddling and incorrectly placed doodles, but I figure out how to use the pen.

We enter into a domed room with windows all around and she exclaims that this is a good photo spot, what with the seats and cushions circumferencing the space. It does look nice; the walls are a greenish teal–colored stone, and the windows extend to the ceiling; again, the light from outside is captured and filtered through. We ask a man sitting there to take a final photo of us together, and decide we’ll browse the adjoining gift shop at the end.

Upstairs there is an exhibit on radios and on how music technology has changed over the years; a couple of iPods are featured as well, and we spend time “saving” the objects, clicking the back of the pens to the icons on the pieces’ description cards. (Photos of the pieces will end up online, in an account of our visit saved on the museum’s website through our ticket code.) There are some pottery and glassware pieces to view next: intricately designed vases, a questionable use of “exotic,” and then painted tiles and furniture. We move on to some more modern works next, but stay within the theme furniture/houseware.

The entire space is an almost odd combination of the old and the modern — and though the “old” doesn’t appear to reach that far back, there is a clear sense of progression, and of building on older materials. The museum manages to convey how the specific act of design can be used to solve problems, whether they be of space and/or convenience, or of greater global scale.

Sometime after the radios but before the birdcages we pause at an interactive table (“smart table”?) on which we can use the pens to design our own objects. I again need a moment to get the pen and the table display working how I’d like them to, but then I’m off to planning out my own vases and lamps, and experimenting with hats and buildings. I make a realistic-looking chair, but fail to take full advantage of the historical information that’s offered at the table as well. We’re probably supposed to be basing our objects off of those.

Last is the “Immersion Room,” where after waiting on line for a couple minutes we come to another table. We pick up our pens again, and this time draw freehand; simple and cutesy designs that we then project onto the walls around us. It’s a fun space, and I miss the bigger meaning until I return to the online account of my visit. (The room is also meant to be an opportunity to view the museum’s original wall coverings.) We take more photos, thankful for the space on our phones.

The gift shop downstairs is full of clever and cute yet overpriced items, which I feel is the usual for museum shops. We leave after browsing, return the pens and retrieve our coats, and see that it’s stopped drizzling outside. Dessert is macarons on the way home.

— Lora

 

a list of the exhibitions that were on view:
Scraps: Fashion, Textiles, and Creative Reuse
The World of Radio
Passion for the Exotic: Louis Comfort Tiffany and Lockwood de Forest
Energizing the Everyday: Gifts from the George R. Kravis II Collection
Hewitt Sisters Collect
Immersion Room
and the ones we missed:
Process Lab: Citizen Design
Ellen DeGeneres Selects
Models and Prototypes Gallery