Michelle Jackson-Beckett

Curator of Rare Books

Michelle Jackson-Beckett, PhD, is Curator of Rare Books at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum Library. She is a specialist in cultural histories of modern design in Central Europe and the United States. She holds a PhD in Design History, Decorative Arts & Material Culture from the Bard Graduate Center, an MA from the Cooper Hewitt Museum/Parsons School of Design program in the History of Decorative Arts & Design, and a BA in German Language & Literature from Saint Joseph’s University.

Michelle works on curatorial research and exhibitions, acquisitions, collection management, scholarly publications, and reference inquiries related to rare and distinctive collections at Cooper Hewitt Library, collaborating with colleagues at the Cooper Hewitt Museum and Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. She enjoys activating special collections for a wider audience through exhibitions, publishing, tours, and classes. Her research interests include modern interiors, industrial design, graphic design, émigré architects & designers, and design exhibitions. Her 2024 book with Oxford University Press, Vienna and the New Wohnkultur, 1918-1938, explores the history of interior design exhibitions held in interwar Vienna and progressive ideas of affordable design, spatial psychology, and early theories of user experience.

Michelle brings more than a decade of experience in design history, academic research libraries and archives, and special collections to her role. Prior to joining Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, she was Curator of Drawings & Archives at Columbia University’s Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library; Senior Lecturer in Design History & Theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and archivist for the Victor J. Papanek Foundation Archive and Library; and Director of Archives & Publications at R & Company design gallery in Manhattan. She has taught numerous undergraduate and graduate courses in the history of design, architecture, and material culture, at Parsons School of Design and the Rhode Island School of Design, with research and teaching topics ranging across Weimar modernism, revivalism in design, the material culture of waste, postmodern architecture and design, industrial design history, environmental design, and world history of glass and glassmaking.

Michelle serves on the Research Committee of the Society of Architectural Historians Historic Interiors Affiliate Group and is a member of the Design History Society and the College Art Association.

Books Authored

Michelle Jackson-Beckett. Vienna and the New Wohnkultur, 1918-1938. Oxford University Press, 2024.

Books Edited

Michelle Jackson-Beckett and Mina Warchavchik Hugerth, eds. Objects: USA 2020. New York: The Monacelli Press, 2020.

Michelle Jackson-Beckett, ed. Wendell Castle Scrapbook: 1958-1980. New York: Damiani Press, 2020.

Michelle Jackson-Beckett, Mina Warchavchik Hugerth, and Otavio Nazareth, eds. José Zanine Caldas. New York/São Paulo: Editora Olhares, 2019.

Book Chapters

“Austria 1945-2000” in World History of Design, Vol. III, Sylvia Margolin and Rebecca Houze, eds. London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2025. (Peer-reviewed)

“Who knows BEST? Gendered Views of Interwar Design Reform and Wiener Wohnkultur” in Erasures and Eradications in Viennese Modernist Art, Architecture, and Design, Megan Brandow-Faller and Laura Morowitz, eds. New York: Routledge, 2023. (Peer-reviewed)

“Interior Architecture and Gendered Practice at RISD: Ernst Lichtblau’s Viennese Contributions to American Design Pedagogy,” in Design and Displacement, Sarah Lichtman and Jilly Traganou, eds. New York: Routledge, 2023. (Peer-reviewed)

“Achieving Well-being in Simple Ways: Cozy, Comfortable, and Contented Domestic Interiors in Interwar Vienna” in Interiors in the Era of Covid: Interior Design between the Public and Private Realms, Penny Sparke et al, eds. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2022. (Peer-reviewed)

“Longing for Past and Future: Cultural Identity and Central European Revivalist Glassware Designs,” in Revival: Memories, Identities, Utopias. Ayla Lepine, Matthew Lodder, and Rosalind McKeever, eds.  London: Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum, October 2015. (Peer-reviewed)

Recent Exhibition and Book Reviews