Thanks to the hard work of our former board member Maria José Gaivão Tavares and her team, we are proud to announce the publication of an online book Ornament containing 13 papers by colleagues from the 2023 ICDAD (now ICOM DESIGN) Annual Conference at the Palácio Nacional da Ajuda in Lisbon. It is available at this link.

We are delighted to announce that, with a majority of votes from ICDAD members and subsequent approval by the ICOM Executive Board, our international committee has officially adopted a new name.

Old name: ICOM–ICDAD
International Committee for Museums and Collections of Decorative Arts and Design

New name: ICOM–DESIGN
International Committee for Decorative Arts and Design

This change aligns with ICOM’s directive to move away from acronyms to make international committee names more accessible to all members. Since we are part of the International Council of Museums, we have removed “Museums and Collections” from our name to create a simpler, more concise identity.

Despite the prominence of the word DESIGN in our name, our committee continues to uphold its broad purview, encompassing decorative and applied arts—as well as design—across all mediums, from ancient to contemporary, including such topics as product design, the experiences and stories behind objects, interior spaces, historical reconstitution, conservation and exhibition, craftsmanship and techniques, future preservation, and more.

Dwelling, Design, and the Decorative Arts
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, United States
Conference: November 19-21, 2024
Post-conference tour: November 22-23, 2024  

Photo: A visit to the Gropius House, home of Walter and Ise Gropius, Lincoln, MA, a property of Historic New England.

The Peabody Essex Museum, in Salem, Massachusetts, is the oldest continually operating museum in the United States, founded in 1799. And so it is fitting that it is also the first museum to install period rooms within its galleries as well as being an early leader in the preservation of historic houses. This commitment to “rooms” reflects a longstanding preoccupation with the domestic sphere in the world of decorative arts and design. Many of the decorative objects found in museums today were originally made for use in the home and by families, and so their interpretation and study must grapple with the domestic in a myriad of ways. 

A bedroom in Yin Yu Tang: A Chinese Home, Peabody Essex Museum. Photo by Dennis Helmar.

How do domestic objects reflect the values and mores of their time? How do they declare or hide their production histories? How do homes function as constructed spaces, and how do museums reconstruct them or, as is sometimes the case, create imagined interiors? Questions around gender, comfort, emotion, taste, function, politics, nationhood, technology are just a few of the topics that emerge when considering the decorative arts of the home. 

This conference explores domesticity and the home through decorative arts and design, and we invite papers that interpret all these terms (domestic, home, decorative arts, design) from a broad perspective. The town of Salem and the Peabody Essex Museum itself have numerous homes dating from the seventeenth through early nineteenth centuries; however, this conference also welcomes papers that explore the domestic sphere both before and after the heyday of Salem’s historic architecture. In addition, explorations of non-traditional domestic spaces and their objects (ships, trains, institutional homes) are equally welcome, as we are interested in the “production of home” through objects in unexpected places. 

Why Salem?  

Salem is a historic New England city that served as a hub of cultural exchange at the crossroads of the early Atlantic World. An international port city, Salem was an eighteenth and nineteenth century center for global trade, art, furniture making and architecture. Today it is home to a density of historic houses and examples of architecture from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, including Yin Yu Tang, a reconstructed and relocated nineteenth century multigenerational merchant’s home from the Huizhou region of China. Salem is perhaps most famous for the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, and the city continues to explore and engage with this troubling yet compelling history. Its location on the North Shore of Massachusetts makes it a site of rich maritime history, and the city’s harbor provides both a dramatic backdrop to the workings of this contemporary community and an important and ongoing area of historic research.  

While Salem will serve as our home base for the conference, we will also explore sites of historic and contemporary decorative arts and design throughout the region. The post conference tour will take participants farther afield into broader New England. For attendees coming from outside the United States, this conference represents a unique opportunity to engage with Boston and New England’s rich museum resources. Its location along the Eastern seaboard also makes it convenient for further travel to major cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.

CONFERENCE PROGRAM 

CONFERENCE PROGRAM DOWNLOAD

Post Conference Excursion November 22-23 

A post-conference overnight tour to museums and galleries in Western Massachusetts will take place Friday and Saturday, November 22-23, 2024. Visits will include museums historic sites, contemporary art and craft galleries, and active artist studios. Limit 25 participants, first come first served.

Post-Conference Program Download

Call for Papers

This conference explores domesticity and the home through decorative arts and design, and we invite papers that interpret all these terms (domestic, home, decorative arts, design) from a broad perspective. The town of Salem and the Peabody Essex Museum itself have numerous homes dating from the seventeenth through early nineteenth centuries; however, this conference also welcomes papers that explore the domestic sphere both before and after the heyday of Salem’s historic architecture. In addition, explorations of non-traditional domestic spaces and their objects (ships, trains, institutional homes) are equally welcome, as we are interested in the “production of home” through objects in unexpected places. 

Dwelling, Design, and the Decorative Arts
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, United States
Conference: November 19-21, 2024
Post-conference tour: November 22-23, 2024

Deadline extended: CFP closes August 10!

The Peabody Essex Museum, in Salem, Massachusetts, is the oldest continually operating museum in the United States, founded in 1799. And so it is fitting that it is also the first museum to install period rooms within its galleries as well as being an early leader in the preservation of historic houses. This commitment to “rooms” reflects a longstanding preoccupation with the domestic sphere in the world of decorative arts and design. Many of the decorative objects found in museums today were originally made for use in the home and by families, and so their interpretation and study must grapple with the domestic in a myriad of ways. 

Design Studio FormaFantasma on the Exhibition Oltre Terra. Why Wool Matters. 13 September 2023

In the exhibition Oltre Terra. Why Wool Matters, on view at the National Museum, Oslo, 26 May–1 October 2023, the multidisciplinary design studio Formafantasma investigates the history, ecology and global dynamics of the extraction and production of wool. The name of the exhibition stems from the etymology of the word transhumance, formed by the combination of the Latin words trans (across, 'oltre' in Italian) and humus (grounds, 'terra').

The project seeks to avoid the simplistic definition of wool as just a material, and to expand its understanding within a much broader ecology. Wool is the entry point to explore and investigate an intricate realm of interactions and interdependencies within an ecosystem. By looking at the development of wool production, artefacts history and material culture, Oltre Terra aims at unravelling the complexities of the cooperative symbiosis between animals, humans, and the environment.