Dior: From Paris to the World

Starting in 2018 to mark the maison’s 70th anniversary, The House of Dior began to develop a series of retrospective exhibitions that explore the history and founding principles of the fashion house. The first iteration of the exhibition, Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams, at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, was followed soon after by an iteration of the exhibition at the Denver Art Museum in Colorado. OMA designed the exhibition at DAM to reference the uniquely French history of the brand, while also introducing new elements that spoke directly to its global influence. Titled, Dior: From Paris to the World, the Denver exhibition brought a new focus to the relationships between France and the U.S. within a site-specific scenographic design. OMA has since designed two other versions of the exhibition for the Dallas Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, with each version unique to its location in terms of construction, materials, and overall design. This lecture will provide an overview of how OMA has worked with the House of Dior and interpreted the unique relationship between the French house and the world. 

*Post reception will include a complimentary glass of wine.

About the Guest

Christy Cheng is a New York-based architect, writer, and editor who received a MArch from Harvard University GSD and a BA in English and Communications from the University of Pennsylvania. Christy is currently an Associate at OMA New York, where she is leading a number of cultural and institutional projects including the Discovery Partners Institute Headquarters in Chicago and the Centre Pompidou New Jersey, the first U.S. location for the French museum in Jersey City. Since 2018 she has led the office’s collaborations with the House of Dior which have included exhibitions in Denver, Colorado, Dallas, Texas, and Tokyo, Japan. Christy has worked as an architect at a number of offices, including her own, and the artist Ai Weiwei’s architectural design firm, Fake Design, in Beijing.  Christy has taught graduate level architectural studios at Columbia University, Cornell University, Harvard University, and CCNY and is a registered architect in New York, California, and Colorado.

These programs are possible in part thanks to the Jean Bodfish Memorial Fund.