Earlier this month in Santa Fe, over 100 designers, manufacturers and retailers attended the first-ever Museum of New Mexico Foundation Design Summit, titled “Design, Creativity + Ethics: How Museums and Global Cultures Inspire Trends in Interiors and Fashion.”
Museum of Indian Arts & Culture
“The summit is about encouraging the dialogue between the artist/designer and the cultural material and its maker,” said event host and founder Pamela Kelly, vice president of licensing and brand management for the foundation. “We would like to see designers who turn to global cultures for inspiration give credit to the material, maker and cultural traditions. By doing such, they imbue integrity and authenticity to the final product. Drawing on the cultural material should be about interpretation, not reproduction.”
The museum's folk-art textile collection
Attendees took part in two days of presentations, tours, exhibits and industry conversation. Participants included Valdese Weavers, Kravet, Hickory Chair, Jaipur, Interface, 3form, Pollack, Hunter Douglas, Designtex, Crypton and Wolf-Gordon, among others.
“There was a need for an event that specifically spoke to the intersection of art and design, plus the ethics of using cultural material for inspiration,” said Valdese Weavers chief creative officer Laura Levinson. “Through partnerships with the Museum Foundation, we give new life to traditions and techniques that once clothed and adorned societies long before our time.”