**What is the role of a design triennial? Are they to educate a broad public about the state of design or serve as research interests for the profession? Should they highlight current trends or sort through the periphery to find the unknown works? These challenges, I think, are especially stark in the design worlds where the various disciplines overlap but are not always working in the same spaces. Alexandra Cunningham Cameron was thinking through all these questions (and more!) while curating this year’s Smithsonian Design Triennial, Making Home.

Currently on view at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, this year’s triennial is the first to be staged in partnership with the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. The exhibition, organized by Alexandra with Christina L. De León, Cooper Hewitt’s acting deputy director of curatorial and associate curator of Latino design, and Michelle Joan Wilkinson, curator of architecture and design at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, features 25 site-specific, newly commissioned installations that explore how design shapes “the physical and emotional realties of home across the United States, US Territories, and Tribal Nations.”

Alexandra, a curator of contemporary design at Cooper Hewitt, was on the show back in 2021, following her massive show on fashion designer Willi Smith and we decided to catch up with her to hear about the big ideas behind Making Home, the role of triennials in the design worlds, and the work she’s excited about in the show.**

The most recent editions of the Triennial were 2016’s Beauty and 2019’s Nature. This year’s theme was at one point just “Home” but is now branded “Making Home”. Tell me how you arrived at this year’s theme. What does that mean as a curatorial framework? Perhaps it’s nerdy, but tell me about the addition of the verb in the title. 

We first settled on the theme of home because it felt like the most relatable framework for talking about many types of design with many types of people. The title “Making Home” arrived after we spent some time working with the Triennial designers, artists and collaborators. It became clear that the work they were developing for the show was active and emphasized an ongoing process.