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Big news for the art and design world: Project Projects has won the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Communication Design. The award is the nation’s highest honor for design.
This is significant, because as we see it, the firm often resembles an artist and curatorial collective as much as it does a successful business. They’re a rare bred, and one worthy of celebration.
It’s almost impossible to miss their presence in the New York art world. Founded by Prem Krishnamurthy and Adam Michaels in 2004, the volume of smart work they’ve produced seems to outsize even the largest design firms. In 2010 they produced the 2010 Whitney Biennial catalogue, which served not just as a document of the biennial, but an archive of those before. It includes a list of every participating artist in each biennial, and every catalogue cover since the inception in 1932. In 2012, Krishnamurthy launched P!, a gallery he describes as a project space, commercial gallery, and Mom-and-Pop-Kunsthalle. It has since relaunched as K., a gallery that runs with an accelerated show schedule and examines economic systems. They’ve also created the identities for seemingly countless New York based galleries— White Columns, Lisa Cooley and Rachel Uffner to name just a few.
Reflecting that diversity of approach, Krishnamurthy said in a statement, “We began Project Projects with an expanded notion of graphic design, one that includes curating, editing, researching, writing and more. For us, design is as much about content and context as it is about form. It’s an incredible validation to this is now an accepted practice within the field.”
Michaels added, “We are grateful for our studios dialogue to have taken place over the years with a truly extraordinary group of collaborators and commissioners.”
When I reached out to the firm to ask them how they felt about the award, the response sounded like joy. Krishnamurthy could barely get the words out as he replied “It’s really fucking cool.”
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