Emily Orr

Emily Orr is Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Design at Cooper Hewitt. Orr’s area of specialty is American design from 1850 to the present. She holds a master’s degree in visual culture, costume studies from New York University and a bachelor’s degree in art history and English from Colgate University. She is currently a doctoral candidate in the history of design at the Royal College of Art/Victoria & Albert Museum. Her dissertation explores how visual merchandising advanced as a design profession in department stores at the turn of the 20th century.

A frequent author and lecturer, her professional experience includes serving as the Marcia Brady Tucker senior fellow in the American Decorative Arts department at Yale University Art Gallery, research collaborator for the 100 Hours Project at University College London and photographic rights assistant for History of Design, published by the Bard Graduate Center/Yale University Press, among other positions.