Conclusion

commented on this expanding field:-

“We don’t see curating as a museum activity. We’re interested in developing a group who can respond to whatever the creative industries require, be that in design practice, retail, government policy or public space. Our graduates could end up curating for anyone from the Science Museum to Selfridges.”140

Conclusion

The emergence of the design museum in the late twentieth century provided a dedicated space for the display and interpretation of the industrial object in mass production. As Paul Warwick Thompson stated in the foreword to a book on twentieth century design published in 1997:-

“Unlike a traditional museum of the decorative arts, the Design Museum is a museum solely of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, concerned exclusively with the products, technologies and buildings of the industrial and post-industrial world.”141

From its origins in the eighteenth century cabinet of curiosities and the nineteenth century international exhibitions, the museum of decorative arts and the modern art museum, the new museum of contemporary design now had a definition and a purpose. Its development coalesced with the expanding discipline of design history, an increase in design-focused museums globally and a rising public interest in design. New curatorial training programmes provided curators with the skills required to communicate this new field of curatorial practice. Design was now perceived to be a subject worthy of study and appreciation in the context of the public museum.

In the 1990s and 2000s a series of political, social and cultural shifts fundamentally changed the way in which museums perceived their

140

Tim Walker, ‘Exhibiting an eye for the contemporary’, The Independent, 18 May 2006. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/student/postgraduate/exhibiting-an-eye-forthe-contemporary-478702.html (Accessed 20.07.15).

141

Paul Warwick Thompson cited in Catherine McDermott, 20th Century Design, London: Carlton, 1997: 6.

audiences, setting in motion a paradigmatic shift in the way that curators engaged with their visitors. The following chapter identifies these broader shifts, analysing their influence on curating practice and the way in which design exhibitions were conceived and presented.