Collection Highlights: Designing Shakespeare

Few playwrights have become as ingrained in the Western theatrical tradition as William Shakespeare, with his plays still eliciting wonder as well as inciting controversy centuries after their documented premieres. With dozens of plays performed for hundreds of years, Shakespeare’s work has intersected with diverse design perspectives—like Edward McKnight Kauffer’s modernist Tempst and Theoni Aldredge’s interpretive period costumes for the Public Theater—allowing for aesthetic re-interpretation of the Bard.