New Directors Named for Two Major US Museums

Designer and Dealer to take over academic posts

In the last week both the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles have named new directors with backgrounds in ‘real-world’ business rather than traditional academia.

At the end of last week the Cooper-Hewitt Museum named Bill Moggridge as director. Moggridge founded the design firm IDEO and is widely credited with designing the first commercial laptop. He will be the first designer to run the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in its over one hundred year history.

Following on the announcement from Cooper-Hewitt, on Monday January 11th MOCA announced that prominent New York art dealer and gallerist Jeffrey Deitch will soon take over as director of the museum.

In two articles written on each of these appointments for the International Herald Tribune, Roberta Smith and Robin Pogrebin discuss the impact of these innovative appointments and what they could mean for the respective museums.

READ ARTICLE: ‘Cooper-Hewitt Picks Director, First Designer in Job’ by Robin Pogrebin

READ ARTICLE: ‘A New Boss, and a Jolt of Real-World Expertise’ by Roberta Smith