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The Nature Conservancy Premiere of
Design for a Living World |
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The Design for a Living World designers and curators: Erzi Tarazi, Christien Meindertsma, Yves Behar, Ellen Upton, Abbott Miller,
Paulina Reyes, Hella Jongerius, Ami Vitale, Stephen Burks, Ted Muehling.
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Some
500 guests filled the elegant galleries and the garden patio of the Smithsonian's
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum - once the home of Andrew Carnegie
- for a special preview of The Nature Conservancy's ground breaking
exhibition, Design for a Living World on May 13, 2009.
A traveling exhibition,
Design for a Living World features objects created by ten visionary designers
made from sustainable, natural materials. The Nature Conservancy collaborated
with prominent designers from the worlds of fashion, industrial and furniture
design. Each designer focused on a natural material from a specific place
where the Conservancy works to create beautiful, sustainable objects
of art and design.
The exhibition features designs by Yves Béhar,
Stephen Burks, Hella Jongerius, Maya Lin, Christien Meindertsma, Abbott
Miller, Isaac Mizrahi, Ted Muehling, Paulina Reyes for Kate Spade and
Ezri Tarazi. Abbott Miller and Ellen Upton co-curated the exhibition.
Bill Uhlfelder, the new director of The New York Nature Conservancy,
Joe Gleberman, Board chairman New York and Mark Tercek, president of
The Nature Conservancy welcomed the guests. Gleberman a longtime major
supporter of The Nature Conservancy summed up the organization's
mission as “Quite simply, we want to save the planet”. But
there were no dire warnings or messages of gloom and doom. Mark Tercek,
Sara Elliot, the project director and Dr. M. Sanjayan the organization's
lead scientist clearly saw the exhibition as a celebration of what is
possible and a chance to make the public aware of the origins of everyday
items from tools to jewels.
Among the creations featured in the exhibition
are fashions by Mizrahi – a cocktail dress with matching floor
length coat and a vampy pair of high heels made of Alaskan Salmon skin;
precious jewels by Ted Muehling made with farmed black pearls and vegetable “ivory” and
Paulina Reyes for Kate Spade's innovative handbags made with sustainable
woods, cotton and jipijapa, a fiber made of palm leaves. Maya Lin whose
work tends to lean towards large scale works like Viet Nam Veterans Memorial
which graces Washington fashioned a small table from a single tree cutting
lateral strips.
Mizrahi sporting his usual head-covering bandana was
busy accepting congratulations on the critic's reception of his
new reality series The Fashion Show. Like the other designers, he signed
100 copies of the gorgeous coffee table book Design for a Living World.
The book features specially commissioned photographs from award-winning
photojournalist Ami Vitale, whose work has appeared in The New York Times,
Newsweek and National Geographic.
Among the chic crowd of conservationists
and design fans were real estate magnate and art collector Lawrence Benenson
whose Benenson Capital Partners was one of the preview's sponsors,
Bravo TV Real Housewives' hunk Maximiliano Palacio ; Sara Herbert-Galloway,
Nanci Schallman, Errol Rappaport with Cindy Marinangel, Katherine & Gary
Andreassen, Miriam Klipper, Melissa Brown, Joy LaSalle, Cristin Gates,
Julie Lasky, David Noh and designer Michael Love.
The exhibition is now
open to the public at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National
Design Museum and will continue through Jan. 4, 2010.
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Nature Conservancy Board chairman Joe Gleberman, Mike Carr, Nature Conservancy president Mark Tercek.
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Sara Elliott, project director with Dr. M. Sanjayan, lead scientist, The Nature Conservancy.
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Ami Vitale and co-curator Abbott Miller.
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Isaac Mizrahi.
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Bill Uhlfelder, director, The New York Nature Conservancy.
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Sara Herbert-Galloway, John Wegorzewski.
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Ted Muehling and Marty Sarandria.
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June Lacome, Bill Ginn, Steve Seward, Bill Uhlfelder, Joe Gleberman, Amy Golden, Elizabeth Ward.
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Valerie Dorian, Yves Behar.
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Paulina Reyes and her brother Jesus Reyes.
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Lawrence Benenson, Karine Ohana and Dr. M. Sanjayan.
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Christin Gates, Maximiliano Palacio, Amy Griffith.
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Victor Santa Anna and Sheri Turnbow.
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Edward Callaghan, Mark Tercek, Dr. M. Sanjayan, John Wegorzewski.
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Aubrey Reuben with his fiancé Dr. Xiuli Mengr.
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James Rievezzo and Serena Chen.
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Mike Carr, Chris Broda-Bahm, Kate Hougen.
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Hella Jongerius.
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Christien Meindertsma.
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Edward Callaghan, Errol Rappaport, Cindy Marinangel.
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| Photos:
Ann Watt |
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