John Furneaux RGD shares a list of five must-visit museums that will inspire you and deepen your knowledge of your design profession.
For many graphic designers, our profession is far more than just a job. It’s an approach to life that affects the way we look at everything, from the products we purchase to the media we consume. This even extends to travel and vacations, where we seek out places, objects and experiences that enrich our never-ending quest to learn more about design.
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York City
Cooper Hewitt is North America’s leading design museum, located in the historic Andrew Carnegie Mansion along the Upper East Side’s Museum Mile. It’s the only museum in the United States devoted to both historical and contemporary design. Its collections and exhibitions explore design aesthetics and creativity throughout the United States’ history.
The Cooper Hewitt collections consist of a wide range of decorative and design objects. The museum originally focused on architecture, sculpture, painted architecture, decorative arts, costumes, musical instruments and furniture. Today, the museum’s collection includes over 215,000 objects, including a substantial graphic design archive. These pieces range from matchbooks and shopping bags to posters from the Soviet Union and even include the papers of graphic designer Tibor Kalman.
The only downside is that, with such a huge collection, their modest-sized space results in the vast majority of items being archived. So do look at their current and future exhibition schedule to check out if there are things you are interested in seeing. One of the great things about Cooper Hewitt is that it’s close to the Guggenheim and the Neue Galerie, so you can make a day (or a weekend) of it and completely overload your senses. And if you still want more while you are in NYC, the MoMA and Poster House are also great places to explore graphic design of the 20th century.
“I have been known to go into grocery stores when I am in different countries just to check out the packaging and be inspired by different approaches. The designer’s continual pursuit of learning and inspiration can be greatly enhanced with a visit to one of the many design museums across the world. It’s regrettable that with the closing of the DX, Canada has become one of the few countries in the industrialized world to forgo celebrating its design heritage. But in the meantime, as designers, we can travel outside Canada and experience the world of design. I have been fortunate to be able to visit four of the five museums listed in this article.”
John Furneaux RGD
The Design Museum, London
The Design Museum exhibits product, industrial, graphic, fashion and architectural design. The museum, founded in 1989 by Sir Terence Conran, was originally located on South Bank near the historic Shad Thames. They moved into their current location in Kensington in 2016, which gave the museum three times more space. In 2018, the museum won the European Museum of the Year Award. While primarily serving as a gallery for temporary exhibits (I’m planning to check out the Art of Wes Anderson and the Blitz Club exhibits in 2026), the museum also has a design and architecture reference library for students, educators, researchers and designers. Their gallery store is stocked full of so many amazing items that you may consider buying another bag just to bring them all home.
London is absolutely packed with great museums, both large and small, that are of interest to designers – like the V&A, Tate Modern and the Museum of Brands. Your biggest challenge will be trying to figure out which one you want to go to first!
Bauhaus Archive, Berlin
Back when East and West Germany were still separate countries, the very first design museum I ever visited was the Bauhaus Archive in the (then-divided) city of Berlin. Its mission is to collect art pieces, items, documents and literature which relate to the Bauhaus School. The museum building itself was designed by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius but wasn’t completed until almost a decade after his death. The museum opened in 1979. The core of the collection, which has grown steadily since then, consists of the artistic remains of drawings, manuscripts, letters and so on. The Bauhaus Archive aims to illustrate the history, practice and impact of the avant-garde art movement internationally. The Bauhaus Archive looks after works by Lyonel Feininger Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy, Werner Drewes, Gunta Stölzl, Oskar Schlemmer and Johannes Itten. (If you haven’t done so already, make sure to read my article “Colour My Life” to learn more about why Itten plays such an important role in graphic design theory.)
Currently, the museum is closed due to construction. While it is scheduled to reopen at some point in 2025, given the typical pace of museum construction, I would check on their progress before you book your trip.
The Designmuseum Denmark, Copenhagen
The Designmuseum Denmark is as much of an excuse as any to take a trip to the design-oriented city that is Copenhagen, one of my favourite places to visit. Founded in 1890 by the Confederation of Danish Industries in Copenhagen, it opened to the public in 1895. In 1926, it moved to a former hospital, where it remains to this day. Since its inception, the museum’s main goal has been to communicate the importance of good design within everyday things. The museum also aims to make contemporary consumers more critical, quality-oriented and concerned with sustainability.
The museum is home to Scandinavia’s largest library dedicated to the decorative arts and industrial design and its exhibits feature the works of famous Danish designers like Arne Jacobsen, Jacob Jensen and Kaare Klint. And core to its mandate, the museum works hard to be not just a place for the exhibition of beautifully-designed items but rather a hands-on space where families, students and tourists can actively participate in events, educational activities, talks and workshops.
Museum für Gestaltung Zürich
The only museum on this list that I haven’t yet been to is Switzerland’s Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, a museum for industrial design, visual communication, architecture and craft. Developed out of the Museum of Arts and Crafts, which was founded in 1875, the museum moved to its current location in 1933 – a building that combines aesthetics and function in a beautiful demonstration of the Modern Architecture Movement.
Spread across three buildings, the museum typically hosts between five and seven temporary exhibitions annually. In addition to these temporary exhibitions, the museum has permanent collections that would certainly be worth checking out for any designer:
- Poster Collection (Plakatraum): Comprising 330,000 posters, this collection documents the international history of the poster – from its mid-19th-century origins to the present day.
- Design Collection: With an emphasis on Swiss design, this Collection includes 10,000 products and 20,000 examples of packaging produced by famous designers, as well as representative examples of anonymous everyday design.
- Graphics Collection: This collection includes almost all graphic disciplines that were of importance for teaching at the former School of Arts and Crafts (today’s Zurich University of the Arts).
- Applied Art Collection: Originally assembled as a study by the Museum of Art and Design, the 15,000-piece collection contains diverse objects in the areas of glass, ceramics, textiles and furniture spanning the 19th and 20th centuries.
As you map out your travel plans for the coming year, hopefully, this list of great design museums inspires you. And wherever you journey this year, I hope you find new places that spark your creativity.
John Furneaux RGD
John Furneaux RGD is the Managing Director for the Toronto office of PS&Co Brand Studio, working with good organizations, to unify brand, people and purpose. For over 30 years, John has worked closely with organizations of all sizes — from entrepreneurial start-ups to global leaders. His award-winning experience spans a broad range of brand image and identity programs, as well as the communications and marketing initiatives that bring brands to life. John also teaches at George Brown College in their Design Management Program. He is a Past President of RGD and is an active speaker and contributor in the design industry.
Tag
Related Articles
John Furneaux RGD
John Furneaux RGD
