Dan Rubinstein on The Home Front

How did you come to be involved with this lecture series?

The museum came to me through their education and public programming department in the summer of 2010. They had heard about a show I had done a couple years ago with Jen Renzi—who will be writing a column related to the topic of the programs for Fast Company—called InDisposed two years ago. We invited a dozen designers to create prototypes with materials that are meant to be disposed of and showed what can happen when you put them to new use.

This series is about bringing people to the museum. MAD is a relatively new institution in its newest form in its new home on Columbus Circle. It's interested in increasing its presence in the design community and taking part in the conversation. I suggested a few ideas and they really latched onto the idea of talking about American design, which I whittled down to American furniture.

"American furniture" is still a pretty big topic. What about it interests you most?

The topics seem quite targeted toward aspiring furniture designers. Why should the general public take interest and attend the talks?There are people who are curious about how designers go through the creative process. The different events cater to picking apart the question of what's wrong with American design. There's something wrong but we don't know what it is. We know there's great design out there and that it exists and those thoughts stem a lot of interesting conversations. At the Salone in Milan there are 300 booths but only two Americans. Why is that? That doesn't make sense. We're one of the wealthiest nations in the world, we make lots of furniture, we have lots of young designers, but there are no Americans there. When you look, though, almost everyone at the Salone is sent by their government or a nonprofit. Every developed nation has some sort of government-supported outlet for a designer to turn to except for the United States. There are so many other things that come up with what's wrong with American design that we'll talk about too.What about The Home Front series are you most excited about?Just to see everything together: to hear people like Michael Graves talk, to see the American Design Club and what they're going to be showing in their open studios. Visitors will be able to walk in, meet a designer, and see what their process is. They just get to stumble into this, which is kind of amazing. It's a great way of interacting with the design world.What do you hope comes out of these discussions?I hope it's just the beginning of a conversation. I didn't want it to be me on a soapbox but for everyone—Surface, The Architect's Newspaper, Fast Company, the American Design Club, the public—to be able to come together on neutral ground and talk design and share stories. Maybe the next step will be taking some kind of action.