In January, D-E Upper School students took two trips to the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in Manhattan, as part of the LEAD (Leaders for Equity & Diversity) program, which provides opportunities for them to learn leadership skills and explore the world and its different cultures.
“The purpose of the trip was to connect our November collage project’s theme of ‘home’ to real-world artists investigating that idea”
The Cooper Hewitt trip centered on an exhibition titled “Making Home,” focused on Black and Native American expressions of place, home, and belonging. “The purpose of the trip was to connect our November collage project’s theme of ‘home’ to real-world artists investigating that idea,” says Joel Lee ’17, US Assistant Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging.
One focal point of the visit was “learning about a native Hawaiian structure called a ‘hale’ that is built with local materials and no nails or bolts,” says Mr. Lee. “Another highlight was viewing ‘Is a Biobank a home?,’ a work by Heather Dewey-Hagborg where she displayed (fake) DNA vials to highlight the intersection of science, ethics, and privacy.”
In addition to getting a tour of parts of the museum, students were able to use their own creativity to make prototypes of homes designed for biomes such as tropical, arid, and tundra.
