Bill Moggridge Named Director of the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum

NEW YORK, Jan. 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Bill Moggridge, designer of the first laptop computer in 1980 and co-founder of IDEO, the renowned innovation and design firm, has been named director of the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York, effective March 2010.

Moggridge has a global reputation as a designer, having pioneered interaction design and integrated human factors into the design of computer software and hardware.

"Bill Moggridge is an entrepreneur, innovator and visionary leader in the design world," said Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough. "The Smithsonian and Cooper-Hewitt are poised on the edge of a new era and having Bill Moggridge as director of our national design museum offers exciting prospects for the future. I look forward to working with him."

Moggridge, 66, describes his career as having three phases, first as a designer, second as a leader of design teams and third as a communicator. For the first two decades as a designer, he developed his business internationally in 10 countries, designing high-tech products, including the Grid Compass, the first laptop computer. With the co-founding of IDEO in 1991, he turned his focus to developing practices for interdisciplinary teams and built client relationships with multinational companies. Since 2000, he has been a spokesperson for the value of design in everyday life, writing books, producing videos, giving presentations and teaching.

"This is an enormous honor and opportunity for me," said Moggridge. "It is deeply satisfying that design is being embraced today as a way to tackle many of the complex challenges facing business and society. In my new role as director of Cooper-Hewitt, I aim to communicate its impact and relevance in everyday life to inspire people's interest, understanding and engagement with all disciplines of design."

At Cooper-Hewitt, Moggridge will oversee the only museum in the United States devoted exclusively to historic and contemporary design. In this role, he will establish the museum as the pre-eminent national design resource, enhance its profile as one of the world's leading authorities on the role of design in everyday life and develop and present exhibitions--both real and virtual.

Moggridge succeeds Paul Thompson, who was Cooper-Hewitt's director for eight years until this past July when he left to become the rector (president) of the Royal College of Art in London. Caroline Baumann, the museum's deputy director, has served as the acting director since July. As acting director, Baumann has spearheaded the museum's RE:DESIGN expansion, the most ambitious project in Cooper-Hewitt's history to revitalize the museum's campus, bringing the capital campaign to 83 percent of the goal with more than $53 million raised to date. She also oversaw the 10th anniversary of the National Design Awards program.

Secretary Clough chose Moggridge on the recommendation of a search committee chaired by Richard Kurin, the Smithsonian's Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture, with Paul Herzan, the chair of the Cooper-Hewitt board of trustees, Elizabeth Ainslie, Harvey M. Krueger, John Maeda and Lisa S. Roberts, all members of the museum's board of trustees. The committee also included Claudine K. Brown, director of the Arts and Culture Program at the Nathan Cummings Foundation; Agnes Gund, president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art; and Cristian Samper, director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

About Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum

The museum was founded in 1897 by Amy, Eleanor and Sarah Hewitt--granddaughters of industrialist Peter Cooper--as part of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. A branch of the Smithsonian since 1967, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum is housed in the Andrew Carnegie Mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

SOURCE Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum