PAOLA ANTONELLI PROMOTED TO SENIOR CURATOR IN

PAOLA ANTONELLI PROMOTED TO SENIOR CURATOR IN MoMA’S

DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

NEW YORK, December 17, 2007—Glenn D. Lowry, Director of The Museum of Modern Art,

announced that Paola Antonelli has been promoted to Senior Curator in MoMA’s Department of

Architecture and Design. Ms. Antonelli joined the Museum as Associate Curator in 1994, and

had held the position of Curator since 2000.

“The title of Senior Curator indicates exceptional merit and is among the highest

distinctions the Museum can offer,” remarks Mr. Lowry. “In her 13 years at the Museum, Paola

Antonelli has successfully helped to establish design as a significant area of study and has

promoted its wider understanding by an ever-growing and appreciative audience.”

Ms. Antonelli has organized a number of important and well-received exhibitions at

MoMA, including Mutant Materials in Contemporary Design (1995), 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),

Workspheres (2001), Humble Masterpieces (2004), SAFE: Design Takes On Risk (2006),

Digitally Mastered: Recent Acquisitions from the Museum's Collection (co-organized with

Christian Larsen, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of

Modern Art, 2006-07), and Just In: Recent Acquisitions from the Collection (also co-organized

with Christian Larsen, opening December 21, 2007). She is currently working on Design and the

Elastic Mind, an exhibition on science, design, and innovation that will open at MoMA on

February 24, 2008.

Ms. Antonelli has lectured worldwide in settings ranging from peer conferences to global

interdisciplinary gatherings such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, and she has served on

several international architecture and design juries. From 1991 to 1993, she was a Lecturer at

the University of California, Los Angeles, and has in the past few years also taught design

history and theory at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and at the MFA program of the

School of Visual Arts in New York.

The recipient of a Master’s degree in Architecture from the Polytechnic of Milan in 1990,

Ms. Antonelli is a Senior Fellow of the Royal College of Art, London, and has received an

Honorary Doctorate in Design from Kingston University, London. She also earned the

Smithsonian Institution’s National Design Award in October 2006, and in 2007, she was named

one of the 25 most incisive design visionaries by Time magazine.

Ms. Antonelli is the author of many exhibition catalogues, including the forthcoming

Design and the Elastic Mind (2008); Objects of Design (2003), a book dedicated to design

objects in the Museum’s collection; and the publication Humble Masterpieces: Everyday Marvels

of Design (2005), which highlights how good design facilitates and enriches our daily life. She is