Planning for the Future Right Now: Riskscapes in Conserving Contemporary Design

ABSTRACT Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is a leader in the field of collecting and displaying contemporary design across a wide range of media, including born-digital and interactive works, 3D computer-aided designed and printed objects, as well as more traditional materials. As digital acquisitions have increased, an interdisciplinary group was formed in order to best guide this expanding area of collecting. This group worked collaboratively to steer the recent Digital Collections Materials Project, a critical review to develop enhanced protocols for preserving extant digital collections. This paper reports on the results of its collections survey and case studies, demonstrating how theories of contemporary art and time-based media conservation can be applied to the unique needs of a design institution. Concerns circling obsolescence and scarcity – referring both to expert knowledge and replacement materials – are examined with regard to mass-produced consumer electronics and newer born-digital works. In order to unpack these questions in a novel way, the term “riskscape,” borrowed from anthropologist Arjun Appadurai and co-opted by environmental and social disaster studies scholars, is introduced as a tool to better reflect the interconnected nature of commercially produced objects and the processes by which they become institutionalized.