Using Cultural Inspiration in Creative Work: The Museum Of New Mexico Foundation Hosts An Inaugural Museum Design Summit

Museums often serve as some of the trust-worthiest institutions in our societies. We rely on these entities to guide our understanding of our worlds in the past, present and future, and the histories we that make us who we are today. Museums also serve to inform our current and future work in all aspects of life – personal and professional. But these rich resources often remain untapped by creatives.

In early November, more than 100 contract and residential manufacturers, designers, retailers and trend analysts from across the country gathered in Santa Fe, NM, for a design summit entitled, “Design, Creativity and Ethics: How Museums and Global Cultures Inspire Trends in Interiors and Fashion.” Hosted by the Museum of New Mexico Foundation, this inaugural design summit sought to explore the ethics of design – more specifically, the ethics of using cultural inspiration for creative purposes. The invitation-only event was sponsored by Valdese Weavers, Kravet, Jaipur, Wolf Gordon, Designtex and Crypton, all of whom license collections from the New Mexico Museum Foundation.

“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, in the event press release. “We would like to see designers, who turn to global cultures for inspiration, give credit to the material, maker and cultural traditions. By doing so they imbue integrity and authenticity to the final product. Drawing on the cultural material should be about interpretation, not reproduction.”

The topics of cultural inspiration in design and the ethical use of cultural references and materials are growing in importance as technology continues to enable us to access cultural diversity with increasing ease.

“There is a big movement going on at the craft and artisan level,” said Valdese Weavers Chief Creative Officer Laura Levinson. “Companies are bringing in artisans more often, and not just celebrity artisans, to create their products.”

This is partly due to the introduction of younger generation buyers who have new priorities.

Ms. Levinson noted that design summit attendees walked away with new insights into how younger consumers, Millennials in particular, must inform the way designers create and market their products.

“Millennials don’t care about branding as much as creating their own habitat. Many of our speakers shed light on understanding who these new buyers are, and how they search for and purchase things.”

And while many designers of both products and interior spaces do an excellent job of researching and infusing meaningful cultural references into their work, that doesn’t always carry over into the end users’ experience of that product or space.

“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 Ms. Levinson. “Through partnerships with the Museum Foundation, we’re giving new life to traditions and techniques that clothed and adorned societies long before our time.”

Attendees from both the residential and contract furnishings sectors enjoyed two days of insightful presentations, collections tours, exhibits and conversation. Participants from Valdese Weavers, Kravet, Hickory Chair, Jaipur, Interface, 3Form, Pollock, Hunter-Douglas, Designtex, Crypton, Wolf Gordon, and retailers Room & Board, Z Gallerie, and Grandin Road were among the group.

The design summit featured content ranging from the role artisans can play in product design and the increasing value of craft in our global society to the capabilities of indigenous plant fibers and the ethics of cultural appropriation.

As we become a more global society, and global cultures become more accessible to us, do those cultures also become more prone/susceptible to cultural misappropriation?

Programming included presentations from Lidewij Edelkoort, one of the world’s most renowned trend forecasters; Lori Weitzner, CEO of Weitzner Limited; Maxwell Ryan, CEO and founder of Apartment Therapy; Dr. Eric Blinman, director of the New Mexico Office of Archaeological Studies; Tony Chavarria, curator of ethnology, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture; Rebecca van Bergen, founder and executive director of Nest; and Pamela Kelly, founder of the Museum of New Mexico Foundation’s Licensing Program.

“Museums are the perfect nucleus for an event like this,” said Ms. Levinson. “They serve as a neutral party to support discussions about creative concerns about design and culture.”

The MNM is composed of four institutions: Museum of International Folk Art, Museum of Indian Arts Culture, New Mexico Museum of Art, New Mexico History Museum and Palace of the Governors, seven historic sites and the Office of Archaeological Studies.

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Since 1998, the MNMF Licensing Program has partnered with many home furnishings manufacturers to develop collections inspired by the four museums’ expansive textiles, furniture and ceramic collections. MNMF licensees gain access to the museum’s world renowned international collections for design inspiration, and they can also use to their advantage their affiliation with a 100-year-old cultural institution. Past and current partners include Kravet Fabrics, Valdese Weavers, Odegard Carpets, Hickory Chair, Wolf Gordon, Jaipur Rugs, Quoizel Lamps, Shaw Rugs, Designtex, West Elm and Marshall Field’s.

Designers who work with the MNMF Licensing Program to create textile and other product collections have the opportunity to provide content and context to younger generations through their designs. Some might feel that this type of research cannot fit into their timeline or budget in the product development process, but giving a product depth of this kind both improves the design and promotes living cultural traditions. What better way to debut something you created?