NATIONAL DESIGN AWARDS - Key Persons

Alan Dye

Job Titles:

Member of the Board of Trustees
Vice President, Human Interface Design

Alberto Eiber

Job Titles:

Member of the Board of Trustees
Retired Founder and President

By the late 1940s, Liebes was working extensively on commercial collaborations, creating Liebes-designed products at a range of accessible price points. In addition to creating her home goods-focused work for Goodall Fabrics and the United Wallpaper Liebes Weaves line of textured wallpaper, in 1949 she also entered the fashion accessories market through her collaboration with Carol Stanley, a brand of handkerchiefs and scarves produced by the New York manufacturer Herzman Incorporated. As with Betty Crocker and other midcentury brands built around a woman's name and targeted toward women consumers, there was no person named Carol Stanley behind the brand. Alexa Griffith Winton is a design historian and educator. She is currently Manager, Content + Curriculum at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. She has researched and published on the work of Dorothy Liebes for over ten years. Griffith's work has been published in scholarly and popular publications, including the Journal of Design History, Dwell, Journal of the Archives of American Art, and the Journal of Modern Craft. She co-edited A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes (Cooper Hewitt and Yale University Press, 2023) with Susan Brown. She has received research grants from the Graham Foundation, the New York State Council for the Arts, Center for Craft, Nordic Culture Point, and the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation.

Amita Chatterjee

Job Titles:

Member of the Board of Trustees
Cooper Hewitt Trustee

Cooper Hewitt

Welcome to Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Cooper Hewitt is the only museum in the United States devoted exclusively to historical and contemporary design, and is the steward of one of the most diverse and comprehensive design collections in existence-more than 215,000 design objects spanning 30 centuries. From ancient textiles and works on paper to icons of modern design and cutting-edge technologies, Cooper Hewitt's collection serves as inspiration for creative work of all kinds and tells the story of design's paramount importance in improving our world.

Daren Pierce

Job Titles:

Liebes Employee

Daren Pierce, a Liebes employee keenly interested in fashion, was hired in 1945 and served as an envoy for his boss at Jantzen's plant in Oregon. Pierce attended costume design school in Los Angeles; illustrating under the name "Mr. Daren," he came into Liebes's orbit by walking into her Sutter Street studio and presenting stylized fashion sketches that incorporated her fabrics, such as the evocative Cuban Moonlight and Shalimar. Pierce had deep affection for his mentor, "Dodo," and the two enjoyed a close relationship. His letters to Liebes from his time at Jantzen in 1947 are intimate and ribald, filled with accounts of resistance to certain "Liebes Look" colors, or wariness regarding her choices in knitting yarns (Fig. 3). [4] Some are embellished with comical scenes or smiling, doodled faces. Pierce also had a hand in executing one of the most sensational fashion items of all: a festive hostess apron "of bright hand-woven yarn and Lurex in gold and iridescent colors, and edged with gold metal tassels," modeled on House & Garden's February 1950 cover (Fig. 4). [5] Many sources credited him by name, but most identify the apron and black apres-ski (or patio slacks) ensemble as Clare Potter's work; Pierce's hometown paper reported that Potter would be adapting both of his designs, with modifications, for her line. No doubt, Liebes connected Pierce and Potter on this project.

Esme Usdan

Job Titles:

Interior Designer

Helen Hintz

Job Titles:

Cooper Hewitt Trustee

Henry R. Muñoz III

Job Titles:

Chairman Emeritus, Muñoz and Company / Vice - Chairman, SOMOS US

Irene Au

Job Titles:

Member of the Board of Trustees
Operating Partner / Khosla Ventures

Ivy Ross

Job Titles:

Vice President, Design for Hardware

Jennifer Deason

Job Titles:

Member of the Board of Trustees
Chairman and CEO / Belong Capital

Joan K. Davidson

Job Titles:

Honorary Trustee
Trustee Emerita

John Maeda

Job Titles:

VP of Design and AI / Microsoft

Jon Iwata

Job Titles:

Chairman / Executive Fellow, Yale School of Management

Karen A. Phillips

Job Titles:

Retired Vice President and Director of Development, Multifamily Programs / NY State Homes & Community

Kathleen B. Allaire

Job Titles:

Honorary Trustee
Chairman Emerita

Keith Yamashita - Founder

Job Titles:

Co - Founder

Kenneth B. Miller - President

Job Titles:

Chairman Emeritus
Honorary Trustee
President

Kevin Gover

Job Titles:

under Secretary for Museums & Culture

Kimberly Schuessler

Job Titles:

Artist

Leigh Wishner

Leigh Wishner is a modern textile and fashion historian. She has worked in the fashion museum field for over twenty years, holding positions at the FIDM Museum at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and at Cora Ginsburg LLC. She received her BA in art history and archaeology from Barnard College, and her MA in decorative arts and material culture from Bard Graduate Center. Leigh has an unabashed passion for twentieth-century textiles, fashions, and interiors, lecturing extensively on these intertwined subjects. Most recently, she contributed to A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes (2023, Yale University Press/Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum), the first major publication devoted to this pioneering twentieth-century American weaver.