All 🌄️Curation 📚️Publications 💬️Programs
Robert Kett is an anthropologist and curator of design based in Hong Kong and Los Angeles. He received his PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Irvine and is currently Associate Curator of Architecture & Design at M+. Prior to joining the museum, he served as Associate Professor of Design Anthropology at ArtCenter College of Design for six years. He has held curatorial postitions at the Palm Springs Art Museum, SFMOMA, and the Getty Research Institute and was Emerging Curator at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (2017-18) and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (2015-16). His work has received support from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, UC MEXUS, the UC Institute for Research in the Arts, and other institutions.
Kett’s work is concerned with understanding design as a culturally situated and socially consequential process and draws on methods and theories from anthropology, science and technology studies, and the histories of design, art, and science. His projects examine design/technology intersections; countercultural and everyday design; and design cultures beyond the West. His writing has been published in 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual, Representations, Design Observer Quarterly, the Getty Research Journal, Curator: The Museum Journal, and other publications. His books and catalogs include So Near, So Far: Ryan Preciado — Manuel Sandoval (Karma, 2024), Prospects Beyond Futures: Counterculture White Meets Red Power (Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2020), and Learning by Doing at the Farm: Craft, Science, and Counterculture in Modern California (with Anna Kryczka, Soberscove Press, 2014). Recent exhibition projects include Eso es la Vida/This is Life: Graphic Design from Mexico (Palm Springs Art Museum, 2023), Everyday or Not at All (ArtCenter, 2022), Fabien Cappello: Sillas Callejeras/Street Chairs (UC Berkeley), and Designed in California (SFMOMA, 2018).
Kett’s work is concerned with understanding design as a culturally situated and socially consequential process and draws on methods and theories from anthropology, science and technology studies, and the histories of design, art, and science. His projects examine design/technology intersections; countercultural and everyday design; and design cultures beyond the West. His writing has been published in 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual, Representations, Design Observer Quarterly, the Getty Research Journal, Curator: The Museum Journal, and other publications. His books and catalogs include So Near, So Far: Ryan Preciado — Manuel Sandoval (Karma, 2024), Prospects Beyond Futures: Counterculture White Meets Red Power (Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2020), and Learning by Doing at the Farm: Craft, Science, and Counterculture in Modern California (with Anna Kryczka, Soberscove Press, 2014). Recent exhibition projects include Eso es la Vida/This is Life: Graphic Design from Mexico (Palm Springs Art Museum, 2023), Everyday or Not at All (ArtCenter, 2022), Fabien Cappello: Sillas Callejeras/Street Chairs (UC Berkeley), and Designed in California (SFMOMA, 2018).