Core77

The always-prolific, ever-amazing Design Institute at the University of Minnesota has teamed up with the Department of Art History to produce an upcoming event that is gonna be a barn-burner. 14 boldfaced names will gather on April 27th and 28th to discourse on, well, the state of contemporary design discourse. Here's the pitch:

The conference, "Design and Its Publics: Curators, Critics, and Historians" (DAIP) brings together leading scholars, top critics, broadcasters and design practitioners with curators from some of the most influential museums in the United States, London and the Netherlands to address how public understanding of architecture and design is shaped by criticism, scholarship and curatorial practice.

Conference speakers will include Paola Antonelli, curator, Department of Architecture and Design, Museum of Modern Art, New York; Ole Bouman, director, Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam; Margaret Crawford, professor of Urban Design and Planning Theory, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, Mass.; Jean-Louis Cohen, professor of architecture history, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; Deyan Sudjic, director, Design Museum, London; and Brooke Hodge, curator, Architecture and Design, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

And...it's free.

Full list of speakers and all the info at http://www.design.umn.edu/go/project/DAIP07