# The Aesthetics of Design **Opening (not a real abstract):** A few years ago, London’s Design Museum witnessed an acrimonious dispute. The museum’s chairman of trustees, designer-industrialist James Dyson, fell out with its director, Alice Rawsthorn, over her exhibitions policy, and finally resigned in 2004. Rawsthorn, commented Sunday Times correspondent Hugh Pearman, was: a noted fashion aficionado, [who] put on a show of Manolo Blahnik shoes. Snipers cattily remarked that most of them could have come from her own collection. Then she famously decided to mount an exhibition of the 1950s flower arranger Constance Spry, clearing out much of the museum’s historic collection to do so. Was that design? It was the last straw for Dyson, which is why he left.1 **Authors:** [[Hamilton]]