Curating the Details
An Interview with Ellen Lupton, curator at the Cooper Hewitt
Earlier this year I had the pleasure of discussing the details with Ellen Lupton, Curator of the Contemporary Design Collection at the Cooper Hewitt.
DD: What do the details mean to a curator?
EL: The details are all part of the signature, of how things have been designed and become evidence of its authenticity. For example, we are very interested in how things are printed, and that means looking up close at the actual paper. We look at the back of the paper for impressions that indicate engravings, or letterpress. With letterpress printing, often there is a certain kind of artifact to how it’s printed, to how the ink hits the paper that makes you know its letterpress. We look at the details to determine how things were made. That determines part of the value they have.
DD: Can you tell us a little bit about how you advocate for the details when you are deciding when something should be in the collection at the Cooper Hewitt?
EL: It’s about recognizing design principles. The field of typography is really about details. It is understanding the subtlety of how adding one point of leading or half a point of leading into a paragraph changes the color of it—the whole weight of a page. In furniture design, it is all about how things come together and how two members are joined to create larger structures. If we just make a sketch of a chair, it will be a seat, four legs and a back, but the real work of designing a chair is how those pieces actually join and that’s what makes great design.
We did a whole exhibition about flatware. With flatware you need to make sure that the weight feels right in your hand— balanced just so and the knife doesn’t go falling off the plate when you are bringing your dish to the sink. There’s detail that you don’t even see, it’s something you feel, the presence of the piece in your hand, it's very subtle and really important.
DD: How can designers today learn to be advocates for the details?
EL: There is a lot of emphasis right now on concept in design and design strategy but at the end of the day, if the execution is faulty, it really doesn’t have the impact that you want—and it ends up not really being worthwhile. We have learned to invest a lot of time in brainstorming and conceptualizing and solving problems and that’s really great… but is it really? If you spend a year on a project and at the last phase you stop paying attention to how it actually gets executed, it won’t succeed. Designers should keep diligent right up to the end.
DD: Curators are in some ways assemblers of history. How do the details make the difference between what’s remembered and what’s forgotten?
EL: You might not remember all the details, but the details make you feel something and that is what we remember—the experience.
by Dora Drimalas
Mohawk
Earlier this year I had the pleasure of discussing the details with Ellen Lupton, Curator of the Contemporary Design Collection at the Cooper Hewitt.
DD: What do the details mean to a curator?
EL: The details are all part of the signature, of how things have been designed and become evidence of its authenticity. For example, we are very interested in how things are printed, and that means looking up close at the actual paper. We look at the back of the paper for impressions that indicate engravings, or letterpress. With letterpress printing, often there is a certain kind of artifact to how it’s printed, to how the ink hits the paper that makes you know its letterpress. We look at the details to determine how things were made. That determines part of the value they have.
DD: Can you tell us a little bit about how you advocate for the details when you are deciding when something should be in the collection at the Cooper Hewitt?
EL: It’s about recognizing design principles. The field of typography is really about details. It is understanding the subtlety of how adding one point of leading or half a point of leading into a paragraph changes the color of it—the whole weight of a page. In furniture design, it is all about how things come together and how two members are joined to create larger structures. If we just make a sketch of a chair, it will be a seat, four legs and a back, but the real work of designing a chair is how those pieces actually join and that’s what makes great design.
We did a whole exhibition about flatware. With flatware you need to make sure that the weight feels right in your hand— balanced just so and the knife doesn’t go falling off the plate when you are bringing your dish to the sink. There’s detail that you don’t even see, it’s something you feel, the presence of the piece in your hand, it's very subtle and really important.
DD: How can designers today learn to be advocates for the details?
EL: There is a lot of emphasis right now on concept in design and design strategy but at the end of the day, if the execution is faulty, it really doesn’t have the impact that you want—and it ends up not really being worthwhile. We have learned to invest a lot of time in brainstorming and conceptualizing and solving problems and that’s really great… but is it really? If you spend a year on a project and at the last phase you stop paying attention to how it actually gets executed, it won’t succeed. Designers should keep diligent right up to the end.
DD: Curators are in some ways assemblers of history. How do the details make the difference between what’s remembered and what’s forgotten?
EL: You might not remember all the details, but the details make you feel something and that is what we remember—the experience.
by Dora Drimalas
Mohawk