Jessica Walthew’s scientific contributions

As the national design collection of the United States, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City is dedicated to historical and contemporary design with a collection of over 215,000 objects. Since its founding in 1897 as the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration, its collection departments have been defined taxonomically by materials. In 2022, the museum created a new collecting department for the first time in its history, acknowledging that Digital collections represent a separate “material.” The introduction of a Digital department stakes a claim that digital design is itself a separate discipline with its own needs of collections management, curation, and conservation. Digital design as both process and product is now pervasive throughout design fields and the collection will continue to grow as the museum strives to represent contemporary design practice. While the museum’s early digital collecting came from a lineage of graphic design and typography, this article discusses the challenges inherent in developing new taxonomies, typologies, classifications, and collections management and preservation processes.

Remediation of disfiguring scratches and abrasions on aging plastics challenges even the most experienced conservator. This study assesses the effect of three NOVUS polishing products on remediation of poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA). Samples were prepared to mimic the depth and type of scratches observed during conservation treatment performed on vacuum-formed reliefs from the 1960s. The study compares samples of new/unaged PMMA to naturally aged PMMA samples. Two different methods were successfully used to assess the polishing efficacy, which is notoriously challenging to document in transparent and reflective media: (1) image segmentation analysis of photographs to yield scratched area fractions, using three approaches (Li-thresholding, random forest, and convolution neural network); and (2) optical profilometry measurements, which provide surface root-mean-square roughness (RRMS) values. Both methods support the qualitative observations that polishing with the abrasive NOVUS products significantly reduced the surface damage; scratch area fractions decreased from 50–60% to 1–5% across the aged PMMA types after treatment, corresponding to an ∼85% decrease in surface roughness. Critically, the two methods are complementary: the image segmentation results demonstrated a greater visible difference between two degrees of polishing treatments on the new material, while profilometry results were able to parse differences in the degree of scratch reduction between the aged and new materials.

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is a leader in the field of collecting and displaying contemporary design across a wide range of media, including born-digital and interactive works, 3D computer-aided designed and printed objects, as well as more traditional materials. As digital acquisitions have increased, an interdisciplinary group was formed in order to best guide this expanding area of collecting. This group worked collaboratively to steer the recent Digital Collections Materials Project, a critical review to develop enhanced protocols for preserving extant digital collections. This paper reports on the results of its collections survey and case studies, demonstrating how theories of contemporary art and time-based media conservation can be applied to the unique needs of a design institution. Concerns circling obsolescence and scarcity – referring both to expert knowledge and replacement materials – are examined with regard to mass-produced consumer electronics and newer born-digital works. In order to unpack these questions in a novel way, the term “riskscape,” borrowed from anthropologist Arjun Appadurai and co-opted by environmental and social disaster studies scholars, is introduced as a tool to better reflect the interconnected nature of commercially produced objects and the processes by which they become institutionalized.

Conservation investigation often includes substantial technical analysis, and digital tools now permit visitor engagement with this content in museum galleries. Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) and 3D laser scanning were integral parts of a recent technical study of gilt metalwork performed on an early 19th-c. French table centerpiece at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (CHSDM). RTI permitted interactive viewing of surface textures to show toolmarks evident from manufacturing. 3D laser scanning allowed comparison of two closely related figures, one of which is believed to be a surmoulage (replacement cast) made from the other. While historical gilt metalwork has been the focus of conservation research for many decades, these digital tools both support innovative scholarship and provide an entry point for new audiences. CHSDM adapted these digital files to create an in-gallery interactive didactic, allowing visitors to learn more about the conservation project through self-guided content. Given an increasingly digital-savvy museum public, the exhibition didactic allowed the conservators to interface with non-specialists and created a precedent for similar collaboration.