For Cooper-Hewitt, a Defining Moment

When the news came out last month that a previously unknown Michelangelo drawing of a candelabrum had been discovered in a box at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, more than one reasonably aware museumgoer no doubt asked: ''Where is that place? And what is it?''

Call it the curse of the Cooper-Hewitt, but for years the museum, one of 16 under the Smithsonian Institution, has struggled against invisibility in Manhattan's world of high-profile, increasingly newsmaking museums, many of them just blocks away.

The Cooper-Hewitt is in the landmark Andrew and Louise Carnegie Mansion at 2 East 91st Street, but perhaps because of the mansion's tall wrought-iron fences, turn-of-the-century architecture and side street entrance, people often do not realize there is a museum inside or that its spacious garden is open to the public. Museum officials say the Cooper-Hewitt is often thought to be part of the adjacent Spence School.

Now, because it has a new director who amid controversy has begun to make significant personnel changes and because the Michelangelo discovery has put the museum at least momentarily in the spotlight, the Cooper-Hewitt may have a crucial opportunity to better define itself.

''It's the right time for the Cooper-Hewitt to decide what it wants to be, what it is and who the audience is,'' said Jeffrey T. Leeds of the New York investment firm Leeds, Weld & Company, who recently left the museum's board. To talk to veterans of the Cooper-Hewitt, the museum is a hurting place right now. In addition to four positions eliminated by the new director, Paul W. Thompson -- including those of two curators, the registrar and a part-time editor -- more than a dozen people have left on their own since he started in February 2001, Cooper-Hewitt executives said.

Mr. Thompson, a 42-year-old Englishman, spent eight years as director of the Design Museum of London. His detractors say he values style over substance, seeks to take the museum in a much more flashy direction to attract a hip downtown crowd, and allowed a valued brain trust to dissipate through his layoffs and attrition without taking the time to analyze its true value.

Even Mr. Thompson's supporters question the wisdom of letting curators go. ''It's a misplaced priority to cut such staff positions, and the decorative arts community should be up in arms about it,'' said Susan Weber Soros, director and founder of the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts. Ms. Soros blamed the Smithsonian's budget cuts, not Mr. Thompson. ''He reports to the Smithsonian,'' she said.

''I think he's trying to do what he did in London,'' Ms. Soros added, commending his record there. ''To make shows that are popular and current.'' Aware of the outcry over some of his moves so far, Mr. Thompson said he let curators go largely because he had no choice. The Smithsonian, which provides 40 percent of the Cooper-Hewitt's annual $10 million budget, ordered Mr. Thompson to make cuts of 37 percent.

Mr. Thompson and members of the Cooper-Hewitt board said the museum had lost its way long before he got there and was crying out for new leadership and a new direction. ''It was unsung, and we wanted him to provide the vision and energy to raise its profile,'' said Richard M. Smith, chairman and editor in chief of Newsweek, who is a Cooper-Hewitt trustee. ''More than anything else the museum needed a sense of direction and an infusion of energy, and I couldn't be happier with his early steps.''

Founded in 1897 by the three Hewitt sisters -- granddaughters of the industrialist Peter Cooper -- the museum is devoted to historic and contemporary design, encompassing architecture, textiles and much in between. It had been at the Cooper Union before it was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1967, and it opened at its current location in 1976.

Like all cultural institutions since Sept. 11, the Cooper-Hewitt is having financial struggles, despite an emergency grant of $750,000 last spring from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. According to a document labeled ''development update'' from a Cooper-Hewitt board meeting that was provided anonymously to The New York Times by someone critical of Mr. Thompson, the museum was $1.75 million short of its fund-raising goals to cover exhibitions and projects and general operating costs as of May. But Jennifer Northrop, a spokeswoman for the museum, said, ''In terms of fund-raising, we're on target.''

The Smithsonian is going through growing pains of its own. Its new director, Lawrence M. Small, has been a magnet for controversy because of his commercial approach, and the organization has its own financial issues.

''If revenue is dropping because of visitorship and federal funding is going flat, all the directors at the Smithsonian have difficult decisions to make,'' said Thomas Lentz, the director of the Smithsonian's International Art Museums Division, which includes the Cooper-Hewitt.

''We all love the Smithsonian, but we clearly need to change the way we operate as an institution,'' Mr. Lentz added. ''This place is in the throes of being modernized.''

The Cooper-Hewitt's board has recently expanded during Mr. Thompson's tenure to 23 members from 18 -- including those who serve in an ex-officio capacity -- and is expected to grow further. The museum also increased its expected contribution from each trustee, to $25,000 from $10,000. The museum's board is behind Mr. Thompson's efforts. ''He was hired with a mandate for change,'' said Kay Allaire, who was in the Cooper-Hewitt's master's program -- a two-year degree in the history of decorative arts -- and recently became chairwoman. ''He has the full support of the board. He's doing just what we told him to do. When someone new comes on, he has every right to hire and fire.''

''We need new blood,'' Ms. Allaire continued. ''We need new people to come in with some fresh ideas. I think he's trying to upgrade the quality of everyone around him. We have to give him a chance to effect his vision.''

Just what that vision is, people inside and outside the museum say, is still unclear to some in the design world, particularly given the depletion of the curatorial staff.

''I don't know what Paul has in mind,'' said Paola Antonelli, the curator for design and architecture at the Museum of Modern Art, speaking of the layoffs. ''It was a pretty strong move, so he has to have a precise idea of why he did it.''

Dianne H. Pilgrim, who was director of the Cooper-Hewitt for 12 years before retiring in 2000, said the dismissals were distressing.

''I think it probably leaves a lot of bad feelings if you don't know what the ultimate goal is and what purpose it serves,'' she said. ''I can't say I'm happy about it. That's because I'm personally involved with these people.''

In an interview Mr. Thompson said his vision was simple enough: to increase attendance by bringing more attention to the Cooper-Hewitt and to improve it physically as a place to work and to view exhibitions. ''As the national design museum, it should be absolutely impeccable in terms of visual and ergonomic standards,'' he said.

Mr. Thompson said that over the next five years he wanted to increase the annual number of visitors to 200,000 from 150,000.

Former employees said Mr. Thompson intended to do that through crowd-pleasing shows like one he proposed early on Manolo Blahnik shoes, which feature prominently in the popular HBO series ''Sex and the City.'' Mr. Thompson said he wanted to do a show on Blahnik ''not because I'm interested in shoes and 'Sex and the City,' but because he's an interesting character in terms of how he arrived at his end product.''

Mr. Thompson also said it was odd that people accused him of caring mostly about the latest hot new thing when he was about to devote a $2 million gift to the museum to creating a new gallery that will feature the museum's permanent collection, some of which dates back to 600 B.C. Mr. Thompson plans to curate the first show in the new gallery himself. ''We're going to put our collection very much center stage,'' he said. Other future curators for the new gallery -- to open in spring 2003 -- are to include Kurt Andersen, the writer, and Hella Jongerius, the Dutch designer.

Mr. Thompson has also attracted others like Murray Moss, the owner of the popular design store Moss in SoHo, who recently joined the board.

Several structural changes are planned as well, Mr. Thompson said: an overhaul of the drab basement into a lecture hall and digital design gallery, and a new entrance hall to make the museum more welcoming.

Even before Mr. Thompson took over, the Cooper-Hewitt was beginning to gain more attention through the National Design Triennial it started in 2000 and the annual National Design Awards. Many in New York City's design community say they hope Mr. Thompson builds on this increasing visibility.

They are encouraged in part by his hiring Matilda McQuaid away from the Museum of Modern Art to be exhibitions curator and head of the textiles department. And they await his choice of a new curatorial director who will oversee the museum's four curatorial departments. The museum has also named a new director of finance, administration and operations.

''I think the Cooper-Hewitt has to get up with the 21st century,'' said Karim Rashid, a designer who recently spun records in the Cooper-Hewitt garden as part of its annual CrossCurrents concert series. Mr. Rashid suggested, for example, that the museum turn over its exhibitions more often, to bring more people in. The current retrospective on the 20th-century designer Russel Wright opened Nov. 20, 2001 and closes Sept. 15. An exhibition on hotels opens in October and runs until March.

While Mr. Thompson headed the Design Museum in London, it erased a $2.2 million deficit and produced surpluses for six years, according to the Cooper-Hewitt. Admissions rose by 59 percent over five years.

Born in Oxford in 1959, Mr. Thompson holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Bristol and a master's degree and doctorate from the University of East Anglia. He and his wife, Adline, have two children, ages 14 and 11.

The board defended Mr. Thompson's staff decisions. ''To say events beyond our control prompted these changes is never a very satisfying explanation,'' said Mr. Smith, the Cooper-Hewitt trustee. ''On the other hand, it happens to be true.''

Beyond this, Mr. Thompson has the difficulty, in a city where the competition among the museums is intense, of selling design as worthy of greater attention. Although a growing field, design has long had a reputation as a less lofty art form because it deals in everyday items like teapots, cellphones and wallpaper.

Furthermore, Cooper-Hewitt suffers from being one of only two Smithsonian museums that are not in Washington -- the other being the National Museum of the American Indian in Lower Manhattan -- which some say makes it a neglected stepchild: out of sight, out of mind. The Cooper-Hewitt receives the lowest level of public support of any Smithsonian museum or research center, Ms. Northrop said.

Others say a large bureaucracy like the Smithsonian makes the wheels grind more slowly -- one former employee likened it to a department of motor vehicles -- particularly because the Cooper-Hewitt board is merely advisory and can't order changes or oversee them in quite the way it could if it were independent.

''The boards don't have the legal power, and that's a problem,'' Ms. Pilgrim, the former director, said. If people are going to give time and money and energy, she added, ''they deserve a certain amount of control and say. That was always an internal battle.''