On 5th Avenue and 91st Street, nestled beside a picturesque Central Park, Andrew Carnegie’s Georgian Revival style mansion lies tranquil behind iron-wrought fences and a blooming garden. In the grand halls of this mansion, where opulence once whispered of unchecked wealth, a new exhibit redefines the very idea of “home.”
An icon of the American Gilded Age, Andrew Carnegie amassed a great fortune through the production of steel in a blossoming America. His 64-room mansion was the epitome of the wealth generated by these titans of industry in what is referred to as the American Gilded Age.
Since 1976, Carnegie’s mansion has been home to the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Behind the antiquated stone and brick facade lies a museum dedicated to modern design and architecture. Against the backdrop of Carnegie’s rich history, the Cooper Hewitt pushes the boundaries of design, creating a brilliant juxtaposition not to be missed.
Now, in the grand halls of this mansion, ‘Making Home,’ the latest edition of the Smithsonian Triennial, invites visitors to rethink what it means to belong, to live, and to place roots in an ever changing world such as our own.
Overview
This exhibit, on view through August 10th, 2025, is the seventh iteration of the museum’s Design Triennial series, which was first established in 2000 to “address the most urgent topics of the time through the lens of design,” as the museum’s press release states. In past years, triennial exhibitions have covered issues such as environmental degradation and unhealthy beauty standards. In addition to identifying these urgent topics, the exhibition series also aims to address the possible advancements regarding the chosen issue. While past triennials have had great success, ‘Making Home’ marks an evolution, being the first time curators from two Smithsonian museums collaborated on this flagship exhibition series.
Every time a Triennial is announced, a new curatorial team is tasked with transforming the established Cooper Hewitt into a thought-provoking reflection on the chosen aspect of society we live in today. In the case of ‘Making Home,’ Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, Christina L. De León, Michelle Joan Wilkinson, and many others make up the ingenious curation behind this exhibit.
De León said, “The exhibit really transforms the way the museum is experienced, where you are not necessarily looking at objects in vitrines and on platforms, but that you’re walking into gallery spaces that are completely transformed.” Traversing convention and abstraction, ‘Making Home’ astoundingly presents twenty five newly commissioned, site-specific installations, each one simultaneously working individually and cohesively to answer the seemingly simple question: what defines “home?”
Separated by sprawling, rich wooden staircases, the exhibit is partitioned into three sections: Going Home, Seeking Home, and Building Home.
Going Home
One particularly fascinating installation in this section of the exhibit is “Welcome to Territory” by Joe Baker of the Lenape Center. The Lenape Center is an organization based in New York that works to foster more visibility of the Lenape people and their historic mistreatment. Placed directly opposite the museum’s entrance, this installation is a tribute to the Lenape people, the original inhabitants of Lenapehoking, which is the very land the museum rests on. By contextualizing this installation into the exact setting of the viewer, Baker forces you to consider what this installation really means.
As can be seen in the image, the installation depicts three intricately constructed feather capes dangling from the ceiling. But rather than being worn, they suspend from the ceiling, absent a human figure, which is a painful representation of the wrongful displacement of the Lenape people from their rightful land.
Further, if one looks beyond the capes, to the setting they are intentionally placed in, even more details come to light. The western-style wallpaper that lines the room depicts many blossoming tulip trees native to Lenapehoking, trees that hold much cultural significance to the Lenape people. This juxtaposition of native trees on the decadent wallpaper of the Lenape people’s colonizers alludes further to the dispossession of land and identity that these indigenous people faced. By surrounding the vacant capes with an almost artificial adaptation of their home environment, dispossessed by the wealth of those who subjugated them, Baker solidifies his point by contrasting the accomplishments of Lenape culture as seen in the capes with the opulent waiting room of Andrew Carnegie.
But the exhibit does not merely discuss the egregious disposition of the Lenape; it’s also a celebration of their culture. In this installation, Baker revives and creates contemporary interpretations of the turkey feathered capes to discuss the way in which the Lenape people and their culture has endured and changed over time.
De León said, “We look at home in a variety of ways, and part of the idea of home is where you go and sleep, but also home as land. even as a feeling, home as in longing, a place where you wish to return or a feeling of home that you wish to remain.” This concept of home as a place to long for, something that draws on historical and personal experiences, rather than merely a house or a block of land, perfectly encapsulates the meaning of “Going Home.”
Seeking Home
If one ascends a flight of the grand staircase, they arrive at the next section of this remarkable exhibit, “Seeking Home.” One installation that is particularly entrancing is “Unruly Subjects” by Natalia Lassalle-Morillo and Sofía Gallisá Muriente with installation design by Carlos J. Soto. Consisting of various videos, archival documents, and artifacts, alongside works by contemporary Puerto Rican artists using natural materials and pigments that have been integral to the archipelago’s inhabitants for centuries, this installation contemplates the complexities of “home” when applied to archaeology.
In this installation, the artifacts mainly come from one of two different collections belonging to the National Museum of American History: the Teodoro Vidal Collection of Puerto Rican History or the collection of indigenous objects by Jesse Walter Fewkes. While both collections feature artifacts of similar origin, the history surrounding these collections contain stark differences. While Vidal was a Puerto Rican government official turned historian, whose ethical contributions to the Smithsonian are revered to this day, Fewkes is a more controversial figure. Fewkes, a Smithsonian archeologist in the early 20th century, spent much time conducting fieldwork with indigenous Puerto Ricans, specifically the Taino people. Though widely credited for his detailed ethnographic accounts, Fewkes career is often marred by his unethical obtaining of artifacts. He was recorded to seize artifacts, religious objects, and sacred items without full consent. He disturbed burial sites and treated these indigenous people as subjects, demoralizing and abusing their autonomy.
When discussing the curation of this exhibit De León said, “This project particularly interested me, as I am both Puerto Rican and a Smithsonian employee, and therefore I am constantly thinking about this. We have a responsibility to care for and hold these objects, and this exhibit explores the complexities of what it means to bring these objects out of their original home.”
Amidst dozens of intricately crafted and procured artifacts stands a seemingly bland industrial file cabinet centered in this installation. Revealing four shallow drawers filled with different samples of earth, the organization is immaculate, with samples sorted vertically by size and horizontally by tone. At first glance, one may think the creators of this installation might have just preferred to be organized for the aesthetic, but within the meticulous organization a deeper truth is revealed.
“It’s very jarring when you walk into a museum facility and you’re opening up drawers and drawers that are simply filled with dozens of objects that now live outside of their original complex,” De León said. There are thousands upon thousands of artifacts and samples such as the ones on display in this installation that had significant cultural importance to real people and their lands before being uprooted in the name of archeology. But what this installation and De León are talking about is what happens after these samples are collected. They are simply thrown into corporate file cabinets, void of significance or individualism, sending the message that these artifacts and by extension the people who they come from are void of those qualities as well.
Coinciding with the establishment of the Smithsonian’s Shared Stewardship and Ethical Returns policy, a policy dedicated to collaborating with Indigenous communities to care for and return cultural artifacts, human remains, and sacred objects, this exhibit further discusses what can be accomplished with the instatement of this policy. The policy emphasizes repatriation, transparency, and ethical stewardship, ensuring that communities have a voice in the care and display of their heritage. This policy was implemented as a response to the question: what are the implications of invasive archeology on cultural heritage and diaspora around the world? And that is what “Unruly Subjects” explores in the context of Puerto Rico.
Hanging on the wall of the installation, not quite front and center, is a map created by Rosaura Rodríguez, a Puerto Rican artist and educator who masterfully depicts the efforts previously described. Using watercolors made from natural pigments native to Puerto Rico, Rodríguez paints a contemporary iteration of one map of the many archeological sites within Puerto Rico currently being used to aid in the repatriation of artifacts from the Smithsonian.
Everyone in a sense is always “Seeking Home,” searching for a place to belong, whether it relates to one’s origins or to one’s futures. After seeing this installation, it is fair to extend this observation as not just people seek home, but rather everything is seeking a home, searching for the place and culture that provides that rightful sense of belonging.
Building Home
If one ascends yet another flight of grandeur stairs to the third floor of the exhibit, one will be presented with the final section of the exhibit, “Building Home.” An installation particularly rich in meaning and history in this section is “Casa Desenterrada” by Ronald Rael.
Ronard Rael is a professor of architecture at the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design. He aims to bridge the gap between indigenous and contemporary design. In 2018, Rael rescued an adobe home in Conejos, a town in the San Luis Valley region of southern Colorado where Rael is native to, from the looming threat of demolition. An adobe is a historic sun-dried brick construction, originating from prehistoric indigenous peoples. Since then, Rael has maintained an initiative to preserve and investigate the rich history of this adobe, which is many times characterized by the home’s original builder and owner, Laffayette Head.
Laffayette Head, originally a U.S. soldier in the Mexican-American War from 1846 to 1848, first built this adobe to serve as a large, fortified compound as well as his residence and office as the eventual first Lieutenant Governor of Colorado. But more importantly to this installation, the adobe also served as the headquarters of the Ute Indian Agency, where Head was the U.S. Indian Agent to the Ute peoples. In 1868, the U.S. government tasked head with documenting the unlawful enslavement of Indigenous people in his respective region. Subsequently, Head produced a census listing 149 names of indigenous people who had been abducted from their Native communities and forced into servitude in the homes of Hispano families.
In this installation, Rael utilized materials and artifacts exhumed from a portion of the Ute Indian Agency that was demolished and buried in the 1960s and reconstructed the adobe bricks to construct a contemporary reflection of the indigenous home and experience in Conejos, specifically in the mid-nineteenth century. The exhibit contains seven rows and dozens of columns of 300 adobe bricks in total, each roughly thirteen by nine inches, resting separately from each other on a black wooden structure. By constructing this exhibit in a curved fashion, the viewer is allowed to walk in the center of their bricks, simulating a feeling of being inside an adobe from Conejos, Colorado.
What is more brilliant than the reconstructed structure itself is the very bricks that it consists of. Each brick is unique, with some bricks’ corners simply covered in white paint, but for many bricks they are adorned with nineteenth century black cursive letters and artifacts from the excavation site. But this writing and archeology is more significant than what meets the eye. Each instance of cursive writing is in fact a name of an enslaved indigenous person from Head’s census, and each artifact is a symbol of the events that transpired at this site.
Alongside the names of enslaved indigenous individuals are English books, ornate tea sets, Bibles, and many other objects that are worn from the test of time. The juxtaposition of cultures on each brick illustrates the difficult truth of the forced assimilation and colonization that was ever so present at the time. Furthermore, when in the adobe, one can hear a voice recording, a soft whisper in honor and remembrance of every name of Head’s census.
De León said, “This place we call the United States is much more than the 50 continental states most people picture. Through this exhibit, people really understand or begin to understand the complexity of what makes up this country and also begin to have a bit more insight into the various experiences of what it means to live under U.S. sovereignty.”
Though not touching, each adobe brick tells its individual story, but they consolidate to create what Rael calls, “Casa Desenterrada.” This installation gives valuable insight into what it means to build a home, especially in a land that doesn’t always want you to flourish with your roots.
Concluding Notes
‘Making Home’ is not just an exploration of individual identity or the American experience — it’s a global conversation. The exhibition spans diverse cultural perspectives on what it means to create, live in, and maintain a home in a contemporary society.
De León said, “With each installation there is a dialogue, something to be moved inside of you, whether that be happiness, anger, excitement, discord, whatever it is. We were really hoping that people would experience each installation and feel something, make a connection in some way, and take away something from that experience.”
‘Making Home’ is not just an exploration of individual identity or the American experience — it’s a global conversation. The exhibition spans diverse cultural perspectives on what it means to create, live in, and maintain a home in a contemporary society.