This past Wednesday, my Graphic Design 1 class taught by Julia Gorton took a trip to the Cooper Hewitt Museum to view the Poster Exhibit and the Wallpaper Exhibit. Exhibitions aside, the Cooper Hewitt on its own is worth a visit. The building was originally a mansion; the home of Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), steel magnate and philanthropist. The architecture is stunning, and the location on Fifth Avenue, just across from Central Park, isn’t too shabby either.
Before this Wednesday’s visit, I had been to the Cooper Hewitt to see the poster show as research for my own poster project for my Process and Skills class. I was thrilled with the show the first time I visited; the museum offers visitors a special “pen” to record display items with a simple touch for later viewing on a personal online page, and to virtually design various objects on large tables equipped with enormous screens. The interaction was great, and it made saving my favorite posters so much easier than constantly taking photos and writing down names. However, as my first visit was very early on in the semester, I could not fully appreciate exactly what I was looking at. Now that we have done so much in-depth research, both in Graphic Design 1 and Process in Skills, on various graphic designers, I was able to make my way through the exhibit with a lot more awareness and appreciation; of Stefan Sagmeister’s work, Massimo Vignelli’s work, and so on. It was definitely worth the second visit.
This time, too, we all got to “play” in the immersion room of the museum, where the curator has set up hundreds of patterns for visitors to project onto the wall, and design their own. Patterns could be resized, rotated, and more. It was very inspiring!
The “How Posters Work” exhibit is on view until January 24, 2016. A visit is definitely recommended. Two thumbs up!
http://www.cooperhewitt.org/events/current-exhibitions/how-posters-work/
