Explore the Impressive Set Designs of Es Devlin
Explore the Impressive Set Designs of Es Devlin
Photos Courtesy of the Cooper Hewitt Musuem
- January 23rd
- 5:00 PM ET
- In-Person
- FREE for Insiders
- Registration Opens on January 9th at 12:00 PM ET
Explore the impressive career of stage designer Es Devlin at a new exhibit inside The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum with curator Andrea Lipps!
- Examine over 300 sketches, paintings, illuminated paper cuts and projection-mapped rotating miniature sculptures that form the seeds of some of the most iconic, cultural congregations of music, poetry, art and activism in recent times
- Step into a replica of Devlin’s London studio to sit at her desk surrounded by tools, materials and works in progress
- Watch as projections bring the objects and wall of the studio to life, encompassing viewers in Devlin’s voice and imagination
- See sketches, paintings and mechanical cardboard models that evolved into the London 2012 Olympic Closing Ceremony, the 2022 NFL Super Bowl half-time show with Dr. Dre and Kendrick Lamar, as well as monumental, illuminated stage sculptures for Beyoncé, U2, Rosalía and The Weeknd
About the event:
For this first monographic exhibition of her work, Es Devlin and the curators dug through her 30-year archive, mapping throughlines that connect her teenage paintings to her stage designs to her contemporary installations.
In this curator-guided tour of An Atlas of Es Devlin, visitors will examine the origins, rigor, and depth of Devlin’s process through a compelling journey into her 30-year archive, charting teenage drawings and paintings, to designs for theater, opera, stadium concerts, and ceremonies, to her current engagement with climate and civilizational crises.
About Andrea Lipps
Andrea Lipps is associate curator of contemporary design and founding Head, Digital Curatorial Department, at Cooper Hewitt, where she leads the museum’s efforts to collect and care for new media types in its permanent collection and innovates scholarship in the field. She also co-chairs the museum’s Responsive Collecting Initiative. Lipps further conceives and organizes ambitious, award-winning exhibitions, most recently “An Atlas of Es Devlin” in 2023; “Nature—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial” in 2019, “The Senses: Design Beyond Vision” in 2018, “Joris Laarman Lab: Design in the Digital Age” in 2017 and, in 2016, “Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial.” An accomplished writer and editor, she authors and edits publications, essays and scholarly articles on contemporary design and digital collecting. Lipps is a regular visiting critic, lecturer and thesis advisor, participates on international design juries, and she frequently moderates and speaks at events, symposia and academic conferences on contemporary design and curatorial practice.
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