The Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum is the only museum in the United States dedicated to contemporary design and design history.

It is a part of the Smithsonian Institution and is located in New York City at Fifth Avenue and 91st Street, along what is known as Museum Mile.

Founded in 1897 by Amy, Eleanor, and Sarah Hewitt, the grand-daughters of industrialist Peter Cooper, and daughters of Abram S. Hewitt, mayor of New York in 1887-88, the Museum was initally part of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

The main museum building was formerly the city mansion of the American steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who lived there until his death in 1919; the neighborhood in which the museum is located became known as Carnegie Hill. The Carnegie Corporation gave the house and property to the Smithsonian in 1972, and the modern incarnation of the Museum opened there in 1976.

The Museum contains more than 250,000 objects ranging from Han Dynasty China to the present and organized into four curatorial departments: Applied Arts and Industrial Design, Drawings and Prints, Textiles, and Wallcoverings.

External links

• Home Page, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum (http://ndm.si.edu/)
• History of the Building (http://ndm.si.edu/100/carnegie/museum.htm)