Design Museum show on prosthetics at PNCA Portland

An excellent show just opened last week in Portland on the design of prosthetics put on by Design Museum Portland. If you are in the area, it is defiantly worth checking it out!

Also, if you don’t know about design museum, they are a 5013c foundation, location free museum based in Boston and Portland (right now) putting on exhibits about design. they do some fantastic work. Portland Archives - Design Museum Everywhere


more info on the show: The Latest - Design Museum Everywhere

Start Date
February 15, 2018

End Date
May 9, 2018

Center for Contemporary Art & Culture at PNCA
511 NW Broadway Portland OR 97209

Bespoke Bodies: The Design and Craft of Prosthetics

Free Exhibit by Design Museum Foundation
On View Now: Feb 15 – May 9, 2018
Center for Contemporary Art & Culture at PNCA

Advancements in medicine, robotics, and 3D-printing have transformed the intersection between the human body and technology. For the researchers and innovators around the world working to improve the field of prosthetics, design plays a critical role in humanizing new technology, allowing people to integrate devices into their lives — not only functionally, but aesthetically as well.

Bespoke Bodies: The Design & Craft of Prosthetics is a major exhibition and education program by Design Museum Foundation. From sculpting ocular prostheses to crowdsourcing affordable 3D printed hands, this exhibition surveys the past, present, and future of prosthetic design on a global scale. Case studies featuring real stories from professional athletes, veterans, kids learning to live with limb difference, and more consider the contemporary world of prosthetic design from both a functional and aesthetic perspective. Visitors will explore the evolution and design process behind a range of prostheses through visual stories, historical surveys, videos, and interactive models. Over 35 case studies — spanning DIY-inventions to the development of mind-controlled bionic limbs—tell the stories behind the patients, clinicians, designers, and artists changing how we think about the impact of design, and ultimately, the future of our mobility.

Portland’s Bespoke Bodies: The Design & Craft of Prosthetics program is in partnership with PNCA and made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts.













Yes, this is an excellent show, but apparently under-promoted in Portland. Really informative, it covers a lot from technology to fashion, with some often moving video testimony of experiences adapting to and learning to live with prosthetics.