The New Design Museum: Co-Creating the Present, Prototyping the Future maps the institutional transformation of design culture across continents, arguing that the design museum as we have known it — object-centred, canonising, Western — is no longer sufficient for the discipline it claims to represent.
About This Book
What does a design institution owe to its moment? This volume pursues that question with precision, assembling essays, interviews, and case studies that together trace how leading museums, galleries, and independent platforms are renegotiating their mandates. Editor Beatrice Leanza draws on voices from MoMA to M+ to the Serpentine, but the book's most urgent material comes from the margins: collectives and organisations in Accra, São Paulo, and Colombia reimagining design education, decolonising curatorial agency, and building collaborative frameworks outside the traditional institutional model. For design curators, cultural producers, and researchers working at the intersection of institutional critique and contemporary design practice, this is essential reading.
Key Features
- 332 pages of essays, in-depth interviews, and illustrated case studies spanning independent organisations and major institutions
- Essays by Beatrice Leanza; 15 interviews with directors and programmers including Carson Chan (MoMA, New York), Ikko Yokoyama (M+ Museum, Hong Kong), Aric Chen (Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam), Giovanna Borasi (Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal), and Lucia Pietroiusti (Serpentine Gallery, London)
- 17 case studies including The World Around (Brooklyn), African Futures Institute (Accra), Cultures of Assembly (Luxembourg), Instituto A Gente Transforma (São Paulo), and Fundación Organizmo (Colombia)
- Published by Park Books, ISBN 9783038604389
What You'll Discover
- How design institutions across different geographical contexts are expanding their missions beyond object-based presentation toward discursive and participatory programming
- The role of decolonisation and queer theory in reshaping curatorial agency and institutional development within design culture
- How computational, ecological, and Indigenous knowledge systems are being integrated into contemporary design practice and public engagement
- Alternative organisational and educational models — from independent platforms to grassroots collectives — that are redefining what a design institution can be
About the Author
Beatrice Leanza is a curator and writer whose practice spans institutional design culture, critical theory, and cross-disciplinary programming. Her work addresses design's planetary scope and its evolving relationship to public and professional discourse.
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 332
- Dimensions: 14.5 x 21.5 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783038604389
- Publisher: Park Books
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Design curators, cultural theorists, museum professionals, architecture and design academics, and practitioners engaged with institutional critique, decolonisation, and the future of design education.