THE LIBRARY IS OPEN 21: THE NEW DESIGN MUSEUM

For the 21st Library is Open, Beatrice Leanza will present her book The New Design Museum.

Beatrice Leanza is a cultural strategist, museum director and critic with a background in Asian studies from Ca’ Foscari University (Venice) who was based in Beijing for 17 years. She has served as creative director of Beijing Design Week, director of maat – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (Lisbon, Portugal), director of mudac – Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts (Lausanne, Switzerland), and co-founded The Global School (Beijing), the first independent institute for interdisciplinary creative research established in the PRC.

She has curated and initiated a variety of projects and events internationally, among which the research programs Across Chinese Cities, presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale at three consecutive editions from 2014 to 2018 and Visual Natures.The Politics and Culture of Environmentalism in the XX and XXI Centuries developed at maat (2020 - 2022). She is a member of the international advisory board of Design Trust (Hong Kong) and is a European Young Leader (2018 – present; Friends of Europe Foundation, Brussel). She is the curator of The Um Slaim School – An Architecture of Connection, Saudi Arabia Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.

The New Design Museum brings together theories and voices from leading international institutions and independent initiatives addressing the transformed––and continually transforming––nature of design in the twenty-first century and its planetary scope in both practical and discursive dimensions. By mapping a new landscape of institutional practices across different geographical locations, it reveals how spaces of culture dedicated to design need transformation—of their missions, programs, and outreach platforms—to respond to an ever-expanding outlook on design as a field that is moving beyond its traditional presentation as an object-based practice. The book integrates essays by Beatrice Leanza, fifteen interviews with directors and programmers—such as Carson Chan (MoMA, New York), Ikko Yokoyama (M+ Museum, Hong Kong), Aric Chen (Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam), Giovanna Borasi (Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal), and Lucia Pietroiusti (Serpentine Gallery, London)—and seventeen case studies that encompass independent organizations and platforms offering evidence of the changing paradigms of public and professional engagement with the discipline of design. The World Around (Brooklyn, NY), African Futures Institute (Accra, Ghana), Cultures of Assembly (Luxembourg), Loudreaders, Instituto A Gente Transforma (Sao Paolo, Brasil), and Fundación Organizmo (Colombia), and others explore global design practices invested in decolonizing and queering agency, as well as computational, ecological, and Indigenous knowledge, and present alternative educational and collaborative frameworks of institutional development. The New Design Museum ultimately examines the critical role of cultural institutions as engines for knowledge production, where a democratic politics of mutual care and shared purpose can be explored and exercised.