Arts & Culture
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, in New York City’s Andrew Carnegie Mansion, is the Smithsonian’s design museum and the only museum in the United States devoted exclusively to historical and contemporary design. Founded in 1897 by Sarah Cooper Hewitt, Eleanor Garnier Hewitt, and Amy Hewitt Green as the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration, it began as a study collection for students and designers. After decades of growth, financial and institutional pressures nearly closed it in 1963, but a public campaign and Smithsonian intervention preserved it. Its 1976 reopening in the Carnegie Mansion expanded its galleries, programs, and national role in presenting design as central to everyday life and culture.
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New York, New York · United States