What Deyan’s Been Doin’

This has been a year of news and gossip about The Design Museum in London, most notably the plans for a $50 million relocation and expansion and the going-away of the museum’s short lived director, Alice Rawsthorn, and replacement by designer Deyan Sudjic. In the newest issue of Icon magazine, they sit down for a minute to talk to Sudjic about his vision for the museum and how it will move forward in the future under his mighty reign. Here’s a bit:

The thing that really strikes you about contemporary art — which is getting much bigger audiences than any other cultural event at the moment — is that it is a very undemanding experience. You can walk into the Turbine Hall [at Tate Modern] and there is a fantastic sense of spectacle. It allows people to go in, feel good, get something out of it without having to work at the experience in the same way as someone going to the Science Museum, for example. I think we need to think about what that means for design.

Architecture has always been part of the mission of the Design Museum. It’s there in black and white. Architecture has been around longer, and it’s got more literature, and it’s got a greater weight. Design has always been a commercial art. But I don’t think design is any less significant in comparison. I think it’s wrong to say yuk, commerce, dirty nasty stuff — absolutely wrong.

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