Home Is Where Everything Is
Installation of Welcome to Territory by Lenape Center with Joe Baker in Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Photo: Ann Sunwoo © Smithsonian Institution
In 1899, a team of construction workers broke ground on the East side of Fifth Avenue, a plot of land that would become the ostentatious, 64-room mansion of Andrew Carnegie. The 1.2-acre Gregorian Revival-style property includes a wisteria-draped garden, coffered ceilings, and a grand staircase of oak. Now, it’s the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, currently showcasing a new triennial exhibition, MAKING HOME. The building’s lived history as a dwelling of an infamous American industrialist is directly engaged through the art that spans multiple floors, each with its relational message to the meaning of home: “Going Home,” “Seeking Home,” and “Building Home.”
On the first floor, guests are immediately confronted with the luscious, turkey-feather capes of the Lenape people suspended from the ceiling. These replicated capes, created by Joe Baker, co-founder of the Lenape Center, are an intentional introduction to the immersive experience of being within the mansion’s walls—it was built on Lenape land. At this pivotal moment in American culture, where the birthright citizenship of Native Americans is being taken into question by a sitting president, this acknowledgment and subversion from Baker is a necessary pause. The coat adorns no one—representing the displacement of the Lenape people and forcing viewers to feel the emptiness in the space around them.
In the next room, The Offering, a collaborative installation piece from Nicole Crowder and Hadiya Williams, tells an intergenerational story of culture and belonging for Black Americans escaping from the South. Each place setting represents a different decade during the Great Migration from 1910 to 1970. This vignette of African American life is full of mementos that “provide a sense of belonging amid disorienting displacement.” Patterned upholstery, coupes, chalices, and mugs sit atop mismatched saucers. Each piece is filled with whimsy and eccentricity, but the disjointed collection evolves from quirky to cozy. The assortment becomes familiar and quaint, like an abandoned box of trinkets at a distant relative's house. The Offering is a clear representation of the experience of going home, wherever that home is.
Installation of The Underground Library by the Black Artists + Designers Guild in Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Photo: Ann Sunwoo © Smithsonian Institution
Further down the hall, a contemporary collection of artifacts and research on the Black diaspora in the US serves as a modern resource for digesting The Offering; it is our communities that will save us by keeping us safe and informed. The Black Artists + Designers Guild (BADG) has transformed the library space into The Underground Library: An Archive of Our Truth. The sanctuary is brimming with books on the history of Black culture in America, liberation for children, and quintessential texts for understanding oppression, ranging from picture books to legal texts. Spilling off the walls and into the custom-designed, futuristic seating, this honoring of Black heritage through the lens of the diaspora aims to create a space to educate and preserve knowledge for the next generation.
Installation of Game Room by Liam Lee and Tommy Mishima in Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Photo: Ann Sunwoo © Smithsonian Institution
Andrew Carnegie’s former home office is now Game Room by Liam Lee and Tommy Mishima. The needle-felted wool furniture in organic shapes is a physical manifestation of the networks and influence of Carnegie’s life force in sustaining the living web of institutional corruption he created. In the room’s center, Philanthropy, a satirical version of Monopoly, is a stylized game table with the “properties” replaced by universities and philanthropic organizations.
The surrounding artwork delves into each “property” mentioned in the network of Carnegie’s influence, with lines connecting it to wealthy entrepreneurs, private societies, or higher education institutions. The impressive artistic choice here lies in how forthcoming Lee and Mishima are with the connections in these data maps. The Smithsonian Institution, the owner of Cooper Hewitt itself, is directly linked to a graphic that states “compulsory sterilization.”
Installation of So That You All Won’t Forget: Speculations on a Black Home in Rural Virginia by Curry J. Hackett, Wayside Studio in Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Photo: Elliot Goldstein © Smithsonian Institution
Documentation of theft, generational eugenics, and letters proving the continued corruption of museums and philanthropic organizations all continue upstairs. A maze of small glass vials, “blood spot cards,” and an examination of surveillance through biotechnology from Heather Dewey-Hagborg is an introduction to the section titled “Seeking Home.” Sofía Gallisá Muriente, Natalia Lassalle-Morillo, and Carlos J. Soto’s collaboration Unruly Subjects is an investigation into the United States’ possession of objects indigenous to Puerto Rico. Aiming to facilitate their return, the piece preserves Puerto Rican cultural history through carnival masks, fishing nets, and gold and diamond earrings. The sweet smell of dried tobacco leaves from So That You All Won’t Forget: Speculations on a Black Home in Rural Virginia by Curry J. Hackett wafts down the halls and hypnotizes the senses. Hackett sourced the leaves from near his family home in Prospect, Virginia, and the installation is accompanied by an original painting from his mother, creating this “unlikely celebration of an otherwise haunting crop.”
Installation of Dream Homes by PIN–UP in Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Photo: Elliot Goldstein © Smithsonian Institution
Dream Homes, a series of shorts from PIN-UP, explores the found family dynamics within communal living for queer and trans people across the nation. The room is affixed with a fireplace and a cross-stitched banner above it; the worn wood paneling and doors seemingly lead to the breezy patio of a home in the American South. Following the onslaught of transphobic executive orders during Trump’s first week in office, the sanctuaries depicted in the documentary shorts are now necessary for the safety and survival of trans people in the United States, in addition to being resources to celebrate joy and a culture of belonging. One of the shorts follows the community members at House of GG’s “The Oasis,” a retreat and educational center for trans people of color. Founded by Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, an author and advocate for trans liberation, this house in Little Rock, Arkansas, provides people in the trans community with the opportunity to play, swim, think, and be themselves.
Installation of Patterns of Life by Mona Chalabi and SITU Research in Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Photo: Elliot Goldstein © Smithsonian Institution
On the next floor, Patterns of Life reminds visitors that outside the polished walls of the Carnegie mansion, existence is fragile. Miniature replicas of homes created by Mona Chalabi, an investigative journalist, in collaboration with SITU Research document the commonplace items now destroyed in the wake of three families affected by domicide: Basim’s family in Mosul, Iraq; Osman and his wife in Manbij, Syria; X and her son in Gaza, Palestine. Delicate curtains separate a chaise lounge, a rug, a lamp, and a television set that should be covered in small flecks of dust but rather have all been senselessly destroyed by military violence. The piece intends to contrast the involvement of the United States as both a leading financier of the United Nations peacekeeping initiatives and the arms manufacturer responsible for the airstrikes that demolished these homes.
Despite the impending question of which of us are truly American by Donald Trump’s standards, the breadth of American corruption has historically been and continues to be an ever-stretching hand—ready to steal, destroy, or oppress. Cooper Hewitt displayed this wretched power over decades, reminding us that the radical solution is embracing the joy, love, and safety in the places we call home. Emblazoned on the tapestry hanging above the elegant staircase is an excerpt from Robert Frost’s “The Death of the Hired Man,” which brings home (no pun intended) the messaging of the triennial in a single sentence: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
Making Home is on view at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum until August 10, 2025.
