W. Women in Italian Design

The Triennale Design Museum illustrates Italian design by means of a system of representations that each year adopts different themes, arrangements and displays in order to answer its key question: “What is Italian design?” On each occasion, it offers innovative views and approaches to the discipline. The ninth edition of the Triennale Design Museum (2 April 2016 - 19 February 2017) curated by Silvana Annicchiarico, with installation design by Margherita Palli, examines Italian design in the light of one its most delicate, most problematic aspects - but also one of the most exciting and appealing, which is that of gender. The idea that gender is no longer just a biological and natural fact, but rather a cultural issue opens up interesting perspectives for what design after design might be. But to address the question of gender in design in an objective and balanced manner, we first need to examine the great removal of the female gender perpetrated during the twentieth century.  

W. Women in Italian Design traces a new history of Italian design in the feminine, reconstructing the figures, theories, and approaches to design that were sown in the twentieth century and that have taken hold, transformed and evolved in the twenty-first century.  

The modernity of the twentieth century pushed women’s design skills to the side-lines, where it has been virtually ignored by design historians and theorists. The twenty-first century is increasingly showing a new-found intensity in these design skills.  Women create, design, experiment, risk and challenge. They are protagonists right from the education stage, with universities increasingly registering a majority of women enrolled and attending lectures, as well as a high degree of excellence among women in the learning process. The chronological approach tells this story in a lively, dynamic manner, using the metaphor of a river that runs the whole length of the twentieth century.   
The Triennale Design Museum celebrates women as the new creative force behind a form of design that is less high-handed, less authoritarian, more spontaneous and more dynamic. Ultimately it wonders if this new affirmation of women will prove to be one of the top aspects of “design after design.”