Paola Antonelli: Treating design as art

TL;DR

Paola Antonelli treats design as a broad, consequential field that reaches far beyond decoration, encompassing everything from Helvetica and everyday objects to safer gas masks for teenagers, toddlers, and babies. Through exhibitions such as Humble Masterpieces, she uses MoMA’s visibility and authority to reveal thoughtful design in ordinary life and encourage people to build their own museum-quality collections. Read on for her examples of how design shapes daily experience and addresses serious human needs.

Transcript

Those of us who believe in heaven have some sort of idea of what heaven would be. And in my idea, heaven is satisfied curiosity. I think of heaven as a really comfortable cloud where I can just lie down with my belly down, like I was watching TV when I was a child, and my elbows up. And I can basically look everywhere I want, see every movie I've a... Read More

Key Insights

• 💭 Design can be seen as more than just decoration and encompasses a wide range of disciplines and problem-solving, from typography to gas masks for children.

Questions & Answers

Q: Why does Paola Antonelli treat design as art rather than mere decoration?

Antonelli argues that design is often misunderstood as interior decoration, fabric selection, or fancy furniture. For her, it is a much broader field that includes typefaces, ordinary household objects, traffic dividers, and equipment designed around urgent human needs.

Q: How does Paola Antonelli use MoMA to promote design?

She uses MoMA’s visibility and authority to show what is happening in design and try to make things better. She notes that 80 percent of her public comes to see Picasso and Matisse, then encounters her exhibitions and can be drawn into them.

Q: What was the purpose of MoMA’s Humble Masterpieces exhibition?

The exhibition encouraged people, especially children, to recognize museum-quality design in ordinary objects. Antonelli hoped children would search a kitchen cabinet or a mother’s handbag and assemble their own design collection on a tray.

Q: What examples of humble masterpieces did people suggest?

Suggestions reflected both daily life and national pride: Spaniards highlighted the mop, Italians cited pizza, and people from Kentucky proposed moonshine, laundry detergents, and liquid nails. A suggestion from Milan featured painted concrete traffic dividers called “panettone.”

Q: Why does Antonelli say design is misunderstood in New York?

She says New York has a strong instinct for contemporary art, even describing three-year-olds who know Richard Serra and visit galleries. Design, however, is still commonly reduced to decoration or choosing fabrics.

Q: How were gas masks redesigned for different ages?

A design school in Jerusalem lowered the neckline of a gas mask so a teenager would not feel completely strangled and could sip a Coke. It also designed a toddler’s mask that allowed the child to be held by a parent and created a small protective tent for a baby.

Q: What does Helvetica illustrate about Antonelli’s way of seeing design?

Seeing Helvetica leads Antonelli to imagine the story of Max Miedinger and other Swiss designers trying to outdo Akzidenz-Grotesk with a new sans-serif typeface. She describes this curiosity as a kind of movie that immediately begins playing in her head.

Q: How does Antonelli compare design cultures in Italy, South America, and New York?

She says design feels normal in Italy, especially Milan, where refined objects can be found in ordinary corner stores. She observed beautiful modernist country homes in Argentina and Uruguay, while describing New York as having a particular instinct for contemporary art.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• The speaker describes their idea of heaven as a place of satisfied curiosity and how they have found a similar experience through their passion for design.

• They discuss their role at MoMA and how they aim to use the power of the museum to make positive changes in the world through design.

• The speaker highlights various examples of innovative and impactful design, from gas masks for children to furniture for psychological stimulation.