Press Room

After the Museum: The Home Front 2013 brings together new works by more than 30 designers and collaboratives from the U.S. to examine the interplay between cultural institutions and the design community, and propose forward-looking approaches to the post-millennial museum. On view March 12 through June 9 at the Museum of Arts and Design, the exhibition encourages audiences to reconsider traditional notions surrounding the structure and role of a design museum through a series of installations, digital initiatives, lectures, and publications. 

Interdisciplinary in scope, works will include Project Projects’ experimentation with prototyping art collections from major museums to democratize the acquisition of masterworks; The LAB at Rockwell Group’s software toolkit for choreographing interactive spaces; and Aaron Anderson and Eric Timothy Carlson’s installation of the museum director’s office chair in the gallery space. Each element of After the Museum examines the dynamic relationship between design and the museum experience, highlighting its influence on product development, information sharing, and interactive programming.   

A curator-led press walkthrough will be held on March 12 from 9:30 to 11:00 am. A number of participating artists will be on hand to discuss their work. 

After the Museum is organized by Manager of Public Programs Jake Yuzna and Guest Curator Dan Rubinstein as the first companion exhibition to MAD’s The Home Front: American Design Now program series, which launched in 2011 to annually rally the design community and explore new trends and obstacles in the field. This first physical manifestation of the series offers American designers a platform and forum to gather, respond, and construct new possibilities for the success of native design on the global stage. Audience participation is integral to this process, and many of the featured works are interactive.   

"The exhibition space serves as a laboratory where the design community can convene with the public to exchange and form new ideas on how design can expand the museum experience," said Holly Hotchner, MAD's Nanette L. Laitman Director. "By bringing artists into the exhibition space, we are opening up channels for our audiences to better understand the creative process and play a more participatory role-an approach MAD has long championed."

Housed on MAD’s second floor, After the Museum is anchored by a modular programming and educational space, created by design collaborative Snarkitecture, that was first presented during Design Miami in 2012. This space will act as the focal point for a series of programs, as well as display additional interactive installations, including Are.na, an online digital collaboration tool that allows for multiple users to share information in new ways. 

Central to the After the Museum exhibition are more than 40 public programs—master classes, lectures, events, and special projects—that showcase the rarely seen research and non-physical components of design. The public program series will launch on March 7 with an open dialogue on museums as platforms for new collaborations. Among the interdisciplinary lineup are master classes with renowned figures such as graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister and design gallerist Murray Moss. For a complete calendar of events, please visit http://madmuseum.org/series/after-museum. 

“Over the last one hundred years, both museums and design have evolved into new complex creative systems. Influencing one another, museums and design, have become key factors in how we organize and comprehend the human condition,” says Jake Yuzna, Manager of Public Programs at MAD and co-curator of After the Museum. ”We now live in a post-millennial world and I am thrilled to be a part of the team at MAD who is aiming to shape a museum to better address this new landscape.” 

EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS

• Keetra Dean Dixon and JK Keller explore notions of community participation with Museum as Manufacturer, in which the public can submit small tabletop designs that will be replicated live in the gallery space using 3-D printing, and then collected and displayed.
• Designers Aaron Anderson and Eric Timothy Carlson’s green-screen mural of emoticons encourages visitors to add their own backgrounds to expand and alter the design, highlighting how visual language is developed over time through collaboration and interaction.
• On March 5, journalist, critic, and architectural historian Alexandra Lange will launch a digital project comprised of works submitted by American museums with design collections. The online archive will offer a snapshot of American design in an attempt to examine whether there is a native design aesthetic.
• Design collaborative REPLY will recreate their studio in the gallery space to design a “process book” that documents After the Museum as it unfolds.
• Charlie O’Geen will carve a hole into the gallery wall to expose the layers of the architecture underneath, revealing the layered history of the institution’s home at 2 Columbus Circle.
• The American Design Club (AmDC) will design and stage a temporary exhibition surveying its nearly five years of existence, which will highlight works by today’s bright new talents in American design. This micro-exhibition will open on May 10, 2013. In addition, Club participants will be interviewed by oral historian Svetlana Kitto for the MAD’s archives on how the organization meets the shifting needs of the burgeoning native industrial design scene.

Additional participants include: AIGA/NY, BOFFO, Garmento, Leon Ransmeier, MatterMade, Pratt, Rich Brilliant Willing, Type@Cooper, among others. 

EXHIBITION CREDITS
Public programs for After the Museum: The Home Front 2013 are made possible through the generous support of 1stdibs.

CATALOGUE
In place of a traditional exhibition catalogue, design studio REPLY will create a process book capturing the research, experience, and physical creations of After the Museum as they unfold. Produced in the gallery, the Process Book will be made available, sheet by sheet, for free to visitors.