The world's first curatorial department devoted to architecture and design was established in 1932 at The Museum of Modern Art. From its inception, the collection has been built on the recognition that architecture and design are allied and interdependent arts, so that synthesis has been a founding premise of the collection. Including 28,000 works ranging from large-scale design objects to works on paper and architectural models, the Museum’s diverse Architecture and Design collection surveys major figures and movements from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Starting with the reform ideology established by the Arts and Crafts movement, the collection covers major movements of the twentieth century and contemporary issues. The architecture collection documents buildings through models, drawings, and photographs, and includes the Mies van der Rohe Archive. The design collection comprises thousands of objects, ranging from appliances, furniture, and tableware to tools, textiles, sports cars—even a helicopter. The graphic design collection includes noteworthy examples of typography, posters, and other combinations of text and image.

The Lily Auchincloss Study Center for Architecture and Design

Online Exhibitions and Projects

• Talk to Me: Design and the Communication between People and Objects
• Young Architects Program 2011
• Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement
• Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen
• Young Architects Program 2010
• Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront
• Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity
• Ron Arad: No Discipline
• Young Architects Program 2009
• Young Architects Program 2008
• Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling
• Design and the Elastic Mind
• Young Architects Program 2007
• Young Architects Program
• SAFE: Design Takes On Risk
• 2005 Young Architects Program Finalists
• Groundswell: Constructing the Contemporary Landscape
• Tall Buildings
• The Changing of the Avant-Garde: Visionary Architectural Drawings from the Howard Gilman Collection
• AUTObodies: speed, sport, transport June 29–September 16, 2002
• Mies in Berlin
• Workspheres
• Structure and Surface: Contemporary Japanese Textiles
• Alvar Aalto: Between Humanism and Materialism
• Achille Castiglioni: Design!
• Stenberg Brothers: Constructing a Revolution in Soviet Design
• Thresholds: Contemporary Design from the Netherlands