The Making of a Modern Museum: The Hewitt Sisters and Design Education

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, was the first American museum founded by women. In 1897, sisters Sarah and Eleanor Hewitt established the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration to inspire good design in American industry. The sisters were from an enterprising family. Their grandfather, Peter Cooper, had founded the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1859, a free school in New York City that included a Women’s Art School. Sarah and Eleanor’s mother, Amelia Hewitt, had been a devoted volunteer at the Cooper Union Women’s Art School and Candace Wheeler’s Society of Decorative Art. The sisters followed in her footsteps, championing education and employment opportunities for women. They methodically studied European decorative arts with the goal of opening a teaching museum and reference library with encyclopedic collections for the study of design. In addition, they were instrumental in creating America’s first museum shop, providing a venue for the sale and marketing of decorative goods designed by students at the Cooper Union Women’s Art School. This paper seeks to shed light on the community of women artists and designers who supported and were supported by the Cooper Union Museum in the early decades of the 20th century. In addition, this paper will examine the museum’s early collecting strategies and will consider how presenting commercial and decorative art—including illustration, textile design, and stained-glass design—alongside painting and sculpture could model a more inclusive vision of historical American art.