How I obtained right here: Alicia Cheng
Alicia Cheng, designer, writer, and now Head of Design at the Met, talks about a career in the cultural field – from starting a design collective for women to the thrill of moving people through a showroom
Alicia Cheng has worked with some of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the United States, including the Guggenheim Museum, Carnegie Museum of Art, Cooper Hewitt Design Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she was recently named Director of Design.
Cheng was born in Michigan, and although she originally studied English and dance, she got interested in the fine arts for a moonshine period in a graphic design studio. Fast forward to 2002, and she had founded the all-female design studio MGMT to work on print, branding and data visions for a long list of cultural clients. She is also the author of This Is How Democracy Looked: A Visual History of the Printed Ballot, which she describes as a rare opportunity to fully indulge her love of learning and research.
In an interview with CR, Cheng went back in time to reconsider the “revealing” moment of clicking design, discussing the joy of creatively moving people through space, and engaging in some of the most challenging and meaningful projects to remember her previous career.