Souped-Up Cooper Hewitt, Part II: Touchstones Amid the Touchscreens (An Irreverent Photo Essay)

In some ways, the new Cooper Hewitt, which reopened on Dec. 12 after a three-year renovation, reconfiguration and technological revolution, is still a work in progress. The most obvious unfinished business in this $91-million (including $10 million for endowment) undertaking is the much hyped introduction of the Interactive Pen, which is currently on display as an Inactive Pen but is expected to come to life some time next month.

There were other instances of tasks left undone in the rush to open. Visiting the museum on its first public day, I took too literally the implied invitation to look behind this fence:

The array of rubble wasn’t a pretty sight:

I chose to use the new entrance on 90th Street (instead of the traditional approach on 91st), passing beneath the new canopy, designed by Diller Scofidio+Renfro (DS+R). They also designed the new gallery cases, visitor-services desk and giftshop.

Apparently there wasn’t enough time for leaf blowers to finish their work before the place opened:

The dispiriting approach to the building’s new entrance, which takes you directly into the cafe and giftshop, featured an overturned bench, a wheelbarrow, a cardboard carton and garbage container (on the right):

To my surprise, I ran into the museum’s director, Caroline Baumann, in the giftshop (but never came across her in the galleries).

I again spotted Baumann in the giftshop when I was about to leave, three hours later. Maybe she was assessing the proclivities of holiday shoppers.

Since becoming the museum’s director in 2013, Baumann has overseen its tasteful, respectful interior renovation by Gluckman Mayner Architects, which provides 60% more gallery space by relocating most of the contents of the 6,000-square-foot third-floor library to adjoining townhouses owned by the museum. The third floor is now devoted to special exhibitions, the second to the permanent collection.

More problematically, about 70% of the museum’s more than 200,000 objects have been bumped from the townhouses to storage space in Newark. With its collections less readily accessible for on-site study, the Cooper Hewitt may have rendered itself more visitor-friendly, but less scholar-friendly.

In the main lobby, the DS+R-designed visitor-services desk was a jarringly incongruous space-age intervention in the elegant, wood-paneled 1902 Carnegie Mansion.

The staff didn’t have many visitors to deal with when I arrived in the early afternoon:

The desk reminded me of DS+R’s food-service counter for the cafe that they designed as part of their remake of Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall:

Also incongruous at the Cooper Hewitt were the big, cheery placards that interfered with contemplation of Andrew Carnegie‘s historic lair:

The surprising emptiness of the entrance hall on public-opening day…

…contrasted with the crush at the invitation-only party on the previous night:

After getting my orientation from a staffer on how to operate the multi-user, high-definition interactive table (designed by Ideum), I decided to try it myself, touching and dragging a flashy object as it floated down the “river” of randomly arranged digital images.

In terms of depth of information, my choice was unfortunate:

Caught in tautology, I did some dictionary due diligence when I got home, learning that a “bonbonniere” is what I had surmised—“a small, fancy box or dish for bonbons.”

As you can see at the upper left of the screen above, I could have clicked on “Related Objects” or browsed by various keywords related to my bonbon holder, including: “Upper Class,” “Curvilinear,” “Eggs.” Instead, I decided to step away from the digital and spend some quality time with the actual.

In this tech-seum, all manner of digital interaction is explicitly encouraged. This means that, contrary to prevalent museum practice, lenders to temporary shows at the Cooper Hewitt are required to agree, in writing, to allow their objects to be photographed, selfied and shared on social media:

I suspect that this acknowledgement of 21st-century imperatives will, before long, become the norm at museums.

These young “Dukes” were having a better time at the interactive table than I did:

They also enjoyed the Cooper Hewitt’s “Immersion Room,” designed by Local Projects, the firm that oversaw development of the museum’s interactive media. In this darkened space, they could select wallcoverings from the museum’s extensive collection, to be projected on the surrounding walls (with audio commentary by the designers).

More entertainingly, they could create and view their own wallcovering designs, as you can see in this brief CultureGrrl Video clip:

Most visitors will find certain touchstones that engage them because of strong personal associations. This beloved (by me) pink Princess Phone, with light-up dial, was the ideal enabler of rambling nighttime communications by preteens in the pre-texting era:

This was part of the first-floor “Beautiful Users” exhibition devoted to “user-centered design.” The phone, according to its label, was “designed to appeal to women and teenage girls as a bedside accessory. The design team had observed users lying bed with the heavy base of the Model 500 phone resting on their torsos; the smaller body of the Princess responded to this unintended use.”

Who knew? I just thought it was pretty…and pink.

I was also fascinated by this ancient ancestor of my 1970s IBM Selectric typewriter that had all its characters arrayed on a round metal “type ball”:

I’ve been to Thomas Edison‘s lab in West Orange, NJ, but I still got a jolt from again seeing his signature invention:

Part of the fun at the Cooper Hewitt is learning about today’s cutting-edge creations: I enjoyed seeing the prototypes for wheelchairs (which visitors are allowed to sit in, but not to operate) that can climb stairs. Sadly, though, they’d be of no help to my quadriplegic friend (injured in a bike accident), who can expertly operate his motorized wheelchair’s joystick, but lacks the upper-body strength needed for the stair-climbing apparatus.

Also of interest to me was the 3D printer that can operate in space, creating tools that space travelers can use to make needed repairs (which would undoubtedly have come in handy for Sandra Bullock in “Gravity”).

“A 3D printer like this, designed for use in microgravity, was sent to the International Space Station, where it is making the very first objects manufactured off planet Earth,” according to its label:

The Cooper Hewitt also provides a few touchstones for art lovers, including this:

The museum’s much photographed “wow” moment comes from a contemporary artwork that serves as centerpiece for the exhibition on the top floor—Tools: Extending Our Reach (to May 25). As demonstrated by the visitor whom I photographed (below), you are permitted to walk into the center of this big-bang explosion of saws, hammers and screwdrivers, which is a bit threatening but also (like many of the practical objects on display throughout the museum) surprisingly beautiful:

Part I is here. All photos (unless otherwise noted) by Lee Rosenbaum.