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We heard from Tanner Woodford, Founder of the Design Museum of Chicago about the museum’s history plus their latest exhibition, The Correct Time.
Founded in 2012, the Design Museum of Chicago began as an entirely volunteer-run organization that planned and executed pop-up exhibitions across the city. Today, they plan roughly 20 free and low-cost outreach programs annually in addition to a permanent exhibition space in Expo 72 featuring rotating exhibitions open free to the public year-round. While Expo 72 serves as our primary hub, the Museum’s impact reaches far beyond these four walls.
At this event, Tanner Woodford, founder and executive director of the Design Museum talks about the history of the Design Museum with a walkthrough of our current exhibition, The Correct Time. The exhibition expands upon an artwork initiated in 1989 by Barbara Koenen collecting 720 donated broken clocks. It also features 24 design interpretations of the hours of the day, research on Chicago’s role in the development of time zones, and reflections on time from the incomparable Art Paul.
The Design Museum continually seeks new opportunities to uplift youth through hands-on lessons, support local artists and makers, and provide accessible means for our audience to connect with design. In 2022, we celebrate our 10-year anniversary, inspired to grow, reflect, and remain nimble as we respond to the changing ways in which museums function and engage with pertinent struggles that impact our communities.
About Tanner Woodford
Tanner Woodford is the founder and executive director of the Design Museum of Chicago. As an artist, he paints optimistic, typographic, and larger-than-life murals. His work has appeared at the WNDR Museum, Soho House Chicago, and is permanently installed at Weber Shandwick in the John Hancock Building.
In 2020, Tanner was appointed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot to the City of Chicago’s Cultural Advisory Council. As a designer, educator, and entrepreneur, he has taught, lectured, and led workshops on design issues, social change, and design history in classrooms and at conferences.
Tanner received a Bachelor of Science in Design from Arizona State University in 2009 and returned to teach in 2010. More recently, he teaches Design Thinking For Social Change at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is happy to be scrappy, irrepressibly optimistic, and believes design has the capacity to fundamentally improve the human condition.
Follow Tanner and the Design Museum of Chicago
@designmuseumchi • @tannerwoodford
