- published: 31 Jul 2013
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A design museum is a museum with a focus on product, industrial, graphic, fashion and architectural design. Many design museums were founded as museums for applied arts or decorative arts and started only in the late 20th century to collect design.
The first museum of this kind was the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In Germany the first museum of decorative arts was the Deutsches-Gewerbe-Museum zu Berlin (now Kunstgewerbemuseum), founded in 1868 in Berlin.
in 2010 opened the Design Museum Holon.
Also some museums of contemporary or modern art have important design collections, like the MoMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris. A special concept has been realised in the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, in which four independent museums cooperate, one of them being Die Neue Sammlung - the largest design museum in the world.
Today corporate museums like the Vitra Design Museum, Museo Alessi or Museo Kartell play an important role.
Coordinates: 51°30′10″N 0°04′19″W / 51.502766°N 0.071862°W / 51.502766; -0.071862
Design Museum is a museum by the River Thames near Tower Bridge in central London, England. The museum covers product, industrial, graphic, fashion and architectural design. It was founded in 1989 and claims to be the first museum of modern design. In 2007, the museum was listed by The Times newspaper as number two in their top five museums of the year.
Deyan Sudjic is the current Director of the museum. He succeeded Alice Rawsthorn in 2006. Unlike most large London museums, the entrance is not free, as it is not subsidized by the UK Arts Council. For this reason it operates as a charity, and all funds generated by ticket sales aid the museum in putting new exhibitions together. The museum attracts 200,000 visitors annually.
The museum is currently housed in a former 1940s banana warehouse on the south bank of the River Thames in the Shad Thames area in SE1 London. The conversion of this warehouse altered it beyond recognition to resemble a building in the International Modernist style of the 1930s. This was funded by many companies, designers and benefactors. The museum was principally designed by the Conran group, with exhibitions over two floors, and a "Design Museum Tank" exhibition space out by the water front.Terence Conran aided in this conversion, as it was his concept to create such a museum of modern design. A large scale sculpture titled Head of Invention by Sir Eduardo Paolozzi was installed in the area between the Museum and the Thames.