On January 26, 2025, the Museum of Modern Art opened Pirouette: Turning Points in Design in its Philip Johnson Galleries. Organized by Paola Antonelli with Maya Ellerkmann, the exhibition drew mostly from MoMA's design collection to examine objects that changed habits, technologies, materials, and social behavior. The checklist moved across everyday and specialist design culture, from Post-its, the Walkman, the Macintosh 128K, the I Love NY logo, accessible-symbol design, Telfar's Shopping Bag, and Shigetaka Kurita's early emoji. Its art-historical value lay in treating design not as background utility but as a primary record of how contemporary life is imagined, standardized, personalized, and made visible.
The show extended MoMA's argument that designed objects are central evidence in modern and contemporary art history.