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*“Design Is Private/Design Is Public”*

*The Twenty-Ninth Annual Parsons/Cooper Hewitt Graduate Student Symposium
on the History of Design*



Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York

*April 2 and 3, 2020*





Privacy and publicity have long played a role in the history of design.
This year’s symposium will consider the transparent or thickly layered ways
in which this happens.  From Adolph Loos’ design for Josephine Baker’s
swimming pool to Philip Johnson’s Glass House, from the Fourdinois
sideboard displayed at the 1851 Crystal Palace exhibition to Armand-Albert
Rateau’s Art Deco dressing table—or even to Thomas Heatherwick’s recent
viewing structure for Manhattan’s Hudson Yards, seeing, being seen,
enactment and embodiment, surveillance, containment, and subtle and overt
forms of communication and collaboration reverberate throughout design
solutions whether in private or public forms.



We are seeking papers that address the creation, promotion, or
dissemination of objects and spaces, material or virtual, created from the
period of the Renaissance to the present day and representing a negotiation
of public and private. How does design, for example, become a dialogue
between an object and its public, an object and its maker, or between
client and designer, whether the client is the Pope or an anonymous user?
How are varied publics quietly delineated by their associations with
objects? How do vocal issues of audience and user feedback affect a
designer and design? How does design—whether through damask curtains or
remote controlled technology such as drones—enable or invade privacy?



Papers can consider historical or contemporary individual designers and
patrons in relation to the creation of site-specific homes, factories,
world’s fair pavilions, theme parks, churches, or museums displaying
private or public collections. Retail spaces, from global flagship
stores to local
pop-up ones, might be analyzed for the ways in which they advertise brand
identity while maintaining individuality. Graphic work, in print or online
 form, offers other examples of the tactics by which design can make actors
of objects, functioning as instruments of exchange or tools for
mobilizing political
networks. We intend to address theories of production and reception as well
as intersections of race, class, gender, ability, and other identities as
they are engaged privately or publicly in design.



Proposals are welcome from graduate students at any level in fields
including art history, history of design, design studies, fashion studies,
history of the decorative arts, Urban studies, cultural anthropology,
history of architecture, consumer studies, design and technology, media
studies, museum studies, food studies.



The symposium’s Catherine Hoover Voorsanger Keynote speaker will be

*Alice T. Friedman*, Grace Slack McNeil Professor of American Art and
director of the McNeil Program for Studies in American Art at Wellesley
College. She also serves as co-director of the Architecture Program. Her
courses focus on the history of European and North American architecture,
with an emphasis on social history, gender, and cultural studies. Friedman
is the author of numerous books and articles on domestic architecture,
women’s history, and patronage, including *House and Household in
Elizabethan England: Wollaton Hall and the Willoughby Family*; *Women and
the Making of the Modern House: A Social and Architectural History*; and,
most recently, *American Glamour and the Evolution of Modern Architecture*.



The Keynote address will given be on Thursday evening, *April 2, 2020,* and
the symposium sessions will be held in the morning and afternoon of *Friday,
April 3, 2020*.



To submit a proposal, send a two-page abstract, one-page bibliography, and
a c.v. to:



Sarah A. Lichtman

Director, MA Program in the History of Design and Curatorial Studies

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*Deadline for proposals: January 21, 2020*



The symposium is sponsored by the MA Program in the History of Design and
Curatorial Studies offered in conjunction with Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian
Design Museum and Parsons School of Design.

--

Sarah A. Lichtman, Ph.D she/her/hers

*ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, DESIGN HISTORY**DIRECTOR, MA PROGRAM IN THE HISTORY
OF DESIGN AND CURATORIAL STUDIES*

PARSONS SCHOOL OF DESIGN | COOPER HEWITT, SMITHSONIAN DESIGN MUSEUM
ART AND DESIGN HISTORY AND THEORY

2 East 91ST STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10128


*BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR | JOURNAL OF DESIGN HISTORY*

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-- 

*MA PROGRAM IN THE HISTORY OF DESIGN AND CURATORIAL STUDIES*

PARSONS SCHOOL OF DESIGN
ART AND DESIGN HISTORY AND THEORY

2 EAST 91ST STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10128
[log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
T 212.849.8344

@parsonsHDCS <https://twitter.com/parsonshdcs>
newschool.edu/parsons/ma-history-design-curatorial-studies/
<http://www.newschool.edu/parsons/ma-history-design-curatorial-studies/>

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