Design museum

A design museum is a museum with a focus on product, industrial, graphic, fashion and architectural design. Many design museums were founded as museums for applied arts or decorative arts and started only in the late 20th century to collect design.

The first museum of this kind was the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In Germany the first museum of decorative arts was the Deutsches-Gewerbe-Museum zu Berlin (now Kunstgewerbemuseum), founded in 1868 in Berlin.

Also some museums of contemporary or modern art have important design collections, like the MoMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris. A special concept has been realised in the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, in which four independent museums cooperate, one of them being Die Neue Sammlung – the largest design museum in the world.

Today corporate museums like the Vitra Design Museum, Museo Alessi or Museo Kartell play an important role.

List of design museums

 * 21 21 Design Sight, Tokyo, Japan
 * ADI Design Museum, Milan, Italy
 * Archivo Diseño y Arquitectura, Mexico City
 * Art, Design & Architecture Museum (AD&A), University of California, Santa Barbara, Goleta, California
 * Bauhaus Archive, Berlin, Germany
 * Bröhan Museum, Berlin, Germany
 * Chicago Athenaeum, Galena, Illinois, USA
 * Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, USA
 * Design Exchange, Toronto, Canada
 * Design Museum of Barcelona, Spain
 * Design Museum Brussels (former Art & Design Atomium Museum), Belgium
 * Design Museum of Chicago, Chicago, USA
 * Design Museum Dedel, Den Haag, Netherlands
 * Design Museum Den Bosch, Netherlands
 * Design Museum Dharavi, India
 * Design Museum Gent, Belgium
 * Design Museum Holon, Tel Aviv, Israel
 * Design Museum, London, UK
 * Danish Museum of Art & Design, Copenhagen, Denmark
 * Die Neue Sammlung, Munich, Germany
 * HKDI Gallery (Hong Kong Design Institute), Hong Kong
 * Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin, Germany
 * Leipzig Museum of Applied Arts, Germany
 * Ljubljana Museum of Architecture and Design, Slovenia
 * M+ Museum, Hong Kong
 * Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France
 * Musée des Arts Décoratifs et du Design, Bordeaux, France
 * Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris, France
 * Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid, Spain
 * Museum of Applied Arts (Belgrade), Serbia
 * Museum of Applied Arts (Budapest), Hungary
 * Museum of Arts and Design, New York, USA
 * Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, USA
 * Museum für angewandte Kunst Frankfurt, Germany
 * Museum für angewandte Kunst Cologne, Germany
 * Museum für angewandte Kunst Wien, Vienna, Austria
 * Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, Switzerland
 * Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Germany
 * Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, Czech Republic
 * Museum of Design Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
 * Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture, London, UK
 * National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway
 * Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia
 * Röhsska Museum, Gothenburg, Sweden
 * Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design, Stockholm, Sweden
 * Swedish Design Museum (virtual), Sweden
 * SONS Museum, a museum dedicated to shoe design, Kruishoutem, Belgium
 * Singapore City Gallery, Singapore
 * Red Dot Design Museum, Essen, Germany
 * Red Dot Design Museum (Singapore)
 * Stieglitz Museum of Applied Arts, Saint Petersburg, Russia
 * Taiwan Design Museum, Taipei, Taiwan
 * Triennale di Milano, Milan, Italy
 * Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London, UK
 * V&A Dundee, Dundee, Scotland
 * Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany
 * Wolfsonian-FIU, Miami Beach, Florida, USA
 * Z33, Hasselt, Belgium