Established 2012 Director Tanner Woodford | Type Design museum Nearest parking Parking garage on site | |
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Location Block 37, 108 N. State St,
Third Floor
Chicago, Illinois, United States Public transit access Washington Station, Chicago Transit Authority | ||
The Chicago Design Museum (ChiDM) is a museum of design in the Chicago loop that was founded in 2012. As a pop-up museum, it hosted exhibitions in different venues around Chicago in 2012 and 2013. Following a successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign in 2014, the museum opened a permanent location in the Block 37 building.
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Mission and purpose
The mission of the Chicago Design Museum is to "strengthen design culture and build community by facilitating the exchange of knowledge through dynamic experiences."
Its programs are collaborative and community-based, largely relying on local volunteers for exhibit design, curation, registration, marketing, and other core museological functions. With a small staff, its foundation is "in its many volunteers’ visions and labor."
The museum is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that believes design has the capacity to fundamentally improve the human condition. It fosters free, open, and honest engagement with diverse audiences through a permanent collection, rotating exhibitions, and educational programming.
Exhibitions
Exhibitions focus on a broad, cross-disciplinary definition of design, encompassing graphic design, architecture, urban planning, interior design, systems thinking, and more.
Great Ideas of Humanity
Great Ideas of Humanity is a series of advertisements in which contemporary artists and designers are asked to create artwork that responds to quotes by leading scientists, philosophers, and academics. The series serves as "an acknowledgment of the increasing globalization or our world and resulting cross-pollination of ideas, philosophies, societies, and culture," and is inspired by the Great Ideas of Western Man campaign by Chicago's Container Corporation of America. Advertisements from this series have been displayed downtown Chicago on its Bus Rapid Transit advertisement stanchions, and in Hong Kong at the Business of Design Week InnoTech Design Expo.
Contributors include Matthew Hoffman on Susan B. Anthony, Andy Gregg on Mary Wollstonecraft, Renata Graw on Hypatia, Max Temkin on Bertolt Brecht, 50000feet on Goethe, Margot Harrington on Sojourner Truth, Cocu Liu on George Sand, Pouya Ahmadi on Rumi, Patternbase on Lucy Larcom, Eileen Tjan on Goethe, Kimberly Terzis on Anne Sophie Swetchine, Alexander Skoirchet on Buddha, Marcus Norman on Lucy Larcom, Tanner Woodford on Edith Wharton, Veronica Corzo-Duchardt on Goethe, LaShun Tines on Frederick Douglass, Matthew Terdich on Benjamin Franklin, Bibliothèque on Alfred North Whitehead, Hugh Dubberly on John Dewey, and Ivan Chermayeff on Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
The Design Pack
The Design Pack is a Cards Against Humanity expansion pack that includes 30 illustrated cards that interpret George Carlin’s infamous 1972 monologue, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.” All proceeds from the Design Pack benefit the Chicago Design Museum, with sales surpassing $130,000 in its first few days on the market. Similar non-profit packs by Cards Against Humanity have raised nearly three million dollars for partner organizations DonorsChoose.org, the Wikimedia Foundation, and the Sunlight Foundation.
Contributors to the Design Pack include Laura Park, Shawna X, Chad Kouri, Susan Kare, Yann Legendre, Paula Scher, Jay Ryan, Mike McQuade, Paul Octavious, Erik Spiekermann, Max Temkin, Debbie Millman, Art Paul, Simon Whybray, Mike Mitchell, Scott Thomas, Matthew Terdich, Jez Burrows, Jason Polan, Jessica Hische, Cody Hudson, Nick Adam, Matthew Hoffman, Magdalena Wistuba + Anna Mort, Eric Hu, Olly Moss, Tanner Woodford, Milton Glaser, and Sonnenzimmer.