Paola Antonelli

Paola Antonelli
File:Paola Antonelli in 2008.jpg Antonelli at the Digital Life and Design Conference, Munich, 2008
Born	1963 (age 60–61) Sassari, Sardinia, Italy
Occupation	author, editor, and curator

File:Visions of Digital Creativity Organic Design Paola Antonelli.webm

Lecture by Paola Antonelli about Visions of Digital Creativity Organic Design at the World Economic Forum

Paola Antonelli (born 1963 in Sassari, Sardinia, Italy) is an Italian author, editor, and curator. She is of Lombard ancestry. She is currently the Senior Curator of the Department of Architecture & Design as well as the Director of R&D at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City.

Antonelli was recognized with an AIGA Medal in 2015 for "expanding the influence of design in everyday life by sharing fresh and incisive observations and curating provocative exhibitions at MoMA". She was rated one of the one hundred most powerful people in the world of art by Art Review and Surface Magazine.

Although a recipient of a laurea degree in architecture from the Politecnico di Milano university in 1990, she has never worked as an architect. Antonelli has curated several architecture and design exhibitions in Italy, France, and Japan. She has been a contributing editor for Domus magazine (1987–91) and the design editor of Abitare magazine (1992–94). She has also contributed articles to several publications, among them Metropolis, the Harvard Design Review, I.D. magazine, Paper, Metropolitan Home, Harper's Bazaar, and Nest. In 2014 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Royal College of Art.

MoMA Curator

Antonelli joined MoMA in February 1994 and is a curator in the Department of Architecture and Design there. Her first high-profile exhibition for MoMA, "Mutant Materials in Contemporary Design" (1995), was followed by "Thresholds: Contemporary Design from the Netherlands" (1996), "Achille Castiglioni: Design!" (1997–98), "Projects 66: Campana/Ingo Maurer" (1999), "Open Ends," and "Matter" (September 2000-February 2001). Her exhibition "Workspheres" (2/8-4/22/2001) was devoted to the design of the workplace of the near future. In 2005 she curated the exhibition entitled "Safe: Design Takes on Risk" for MoMA.

From 1991 to 1993, Antonelli was a lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she taught design history and theory. In the spring of 2003, she started to teach a course of design theory at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She has also lectured elsewhere on design and architecture in Europe and the United States and served on several international architecture and design juries.

Antonelli's goal is to promote design's understanding role until its influence on society and on progress is fully acknowledged. She curated the exhibition entitled "Safe" in 2005 based on her show at the International Design Conference in Aspen (August 20–23, 2003), similarly entitled "Safe: Design Takes on Risk." Other recent projects include a book about food from the world over, as examples of distinctive design, and a television program on design. As a curator, Antonelli has added various video games to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art and she has been attempting to include Boeing 747 in MoMA's permanent collection as well.

All these projects have in common a scale and an approach that mixes architecture with design, as most of the dwellings are conceived as complex and mobile objects.

Publications

Contributions

• From Pyramids to Spacecraft
• Talk to Me: Design and the Communication between People and Objects
• Mutant Materials in Contemporary Design
• "Achille Castiglioni"
• "Japanese Design"
• "Modern Contemporary"
• "Design the Elastic Mind"
• "Modern Contemporary; Art at MoMA Since 1980"
• Hella Jongerius – Misfit
• Pasta by Design – Forward
• Workspheres: Design and Contemporary Work Styles
• Margaret Helfand Architects – Introduction
• On the Table – On the American Table
• Safe: Design Takes on Risk – Grace Under Pressure
• Droog Design – Spirit of the Nineties
• No Discipline – Preface

Appearances

• TED Talks: Paola Antonelli treats design as art at TED in 2007
• Tom Bieling interviews Paola Antonelli: Thinking and Problem Making for [Design Research Network] in 2009
• "Designers on Top" presentation at Eyeo Festival 2012
• "Charlie Rose Show"
• "The Colbert Report Interview" (episode #1160, production code 09068, which originally aired on February 27, 2013)

External links

• "an Ambassador for Design", profile on BAIA Link network, Business Association
• Paola Antonelli- The Future Italy America
• Paola Antonelli at TED
  • Treat design as art (TED2007)
  • Why I brought Pac-Man to MoMA (TEDSalon NY2013)