Secret collections
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mad about the mad
Raul de Nieves
THE MUSEUM OF ARTS AND DESIGN IN NEW YORK HAS OFFICIALLY BECOME ONE OF THE LEADING CENTRES FOR PROMOTING CROSS-FERTILISATION BETWEEN ART AND CRAFT The building on Columbus Circle that houses New York’s Museum of Arts and Design was designed by Brad Cloepfil (Allied Works) and inaugurated in 2008. Ambitious in its size and structure (over 5,000 square metres), experimental in its modern educational workshops and visionary in its ability to combine design, applied arts, crafts and research, the MAD arrived on the New York cultural scene in response to a challenge: the old museum that it replaced had
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never been able to truly affirm itself among heavyweights such as the MET, the MoMA, the Guggenheim and the Whitney. Even the theme of its collections, the arts and crafts, was not particularly appealing, and attracted very little interest from people visiting the Big Apple. The response of the Museum’s Board to this challenge has been extremely successful. The economic crisis of 2008 has shifted attention back to a different set of values, associated
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