 Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to the Smithsonian's Undersecretary for History, Art, and Culture, Richard Curran. If I could just have it, just have your attention for a moment. I'm a New Yorker, and I know a rowdy New York crowd, but it's great to be here tonight. Welcome to the National Design Awards Gala. Tonight, we celebrate 14 years of the National Design Awards. To all the winners. Because of you, we experience the world in a unique and interesting way every day. Just last month, our winners were honored at the White House by First Lady Michelle Obama, our honorary patron. We thank her for her continued support. We also thank this year's winners, jurors, and guest designers who shared their knowledge with 300 teens at the Washington, D.C. Design Fair. And let me just say, we heard the voices and the excitement of those teens in the Smithsonian, and it was pure pleasure. And then to have to close the National Museums of the United States was sad, tragic, and probably pretty stupid. And so we're glad now that the museums are back open. Two million Americans would have come through the doors of those museums. In the three weeks we were closed, and those doors were closed to them. We do not want that to happen again. I'd like to thank all our supporters. All of you have come out tonight to make this celebration possible. Again, as I said, this is the 14th annual awards ceremony in an honor that was started under the Clinton Gore administration, and we're grateful that has continued through other presidential administrations. And it's an honor tonight to have with us a member of that Clinton Gore administration, former vice president of the United States, Nobel laureate, and former regent of the Smithsonian, Al Gore. Now through the shutdown, the Cooper U.S. staff was very dedicated. They worked like the Dickens, and despite the shutdown, we're able to arrange this for all of us tonight, along with other activities for design activities. Leading that effort has been the Smithsonian's newest director, the newest museum director at the Smithsonian, someone who will take it into a vibrant future and really open up new doors to the museum. Come next year, Caroline Bowman. Please welcome Caroline. Thank you, Richard. Good evening, everyone, and thank you all for being here. I am absolutely thrilled to see so many Cooper Hewitt supporters and close friends with us tonight. 665 to be exact. We've broken all records in the 14-year history of the National Design Awards, and this evening would not be possible without every one of you. Please feel free to spread the word tonight about Cooper Hewitt and the winners. First of all, I would like to give an enormous shout-out to the entire Cooper Hewitt team, who pulled off tonight, as well as all of the events of National Design Week, despite the federal shutdown. The Cooper Hewitt staff worked nonstop, meeting in coffee shops, borrowed offices in each other's homes. Since our offices were off limits. Shutdown? What's shutdown? That's the type of team spirit we have at Cooper Hewitt. This is an incredible time in our history. The countdown toward the reopening has begun. Two years ago, Cooper Hewitt embarked on its most ambitious renovation in its history. And boy are we ever renovating. We're restoring every millimeter of the Andrew Carnegie mansion, replacing teat floors in exactly the same pattern that Andrew Carnegie had them installed in 1902. And we're also expanding with 60% more gallery space for unforgettable design experiences. We're breaking down walls inside and out. And when we open in a year, we'll be making design accessible locally, nationally, and globally. Very special thanks to Cooper Hewitt's Board of Trustees for helping us achieve our mission every day. And New York City for being behind our transformation in a big way. We are creating the designers of the future through our stellar educational programs, our collection of 217,000 objects, online initiatives, and of course, the National Design Awards. And we couldn't be doing it without you. We thank our Gala leadership and David Stark and his design team for helping us create this festive event honoring the 2013 winners. We at Cooper Hewitt have been living in a construction site. So we thought we'd bring some of it here with the grid pattern. Tonight's Gala is the centerpiece of our eighth annual National Design Week. Cooper Hewitt made design come alive this week, beginning with a terrific family program led by Todd Oldham at the Cooper Hewitt Design Center in Harlem. Since its opening just 18 months ago, more than 20,000 students, families, and educators have been immersed in design programs there. And just yesterday at the business of design breakfast, CEO of Undercurrent, Aaron Dignan and I, hosted a discussion about design and innovation with business leaders from around the country, many of whom are here with us tonight. With the fabulous Tim Gunn, we mentored hundreds of New York City teens about how exciting and fulfilling a career in design can be at the Teen Design Fair. And this year's winners share their thoughts and inspirations in a sold out winners panel about design as a communication tool and the week is not over yet. The National Design Awards is the only awards program in the country that celebrates all design disciplines and we can't do it alone. We've forged partnerships with many professional design organizations to raise awareness across the nation. Our sincere gratitude to Target for your years of support to Cooper Hewitt and your dedication to making design accessible to all. Since 1946, Target has given 5% of its profit to local communities, which today equals more than $4 million every week, imagine. And as part of its commitment to education, Target will have invested more than $1 billion to education programs by the end of 2015. We at Cooper Hewitt see Target's impact in numerous elements of National Design Week, family programs and the design in the classroom program. For helping to make this evening possible, we also thank Procter & Gamble for your support and Soda Stream. I hope you enjoyed the Cooper Kalada's, I have one, thankfully I need it, at the lively bar designed by 2004 National Design Award winner Eve Bajar. Cheers everybody, delicious. Our thanks to Design Within Reach for your support of the Gala tonight and the business of design breakfast yesterday morning. Thank you. Later this evening, we're excited to announce the winner of the People's Design Award, voting just closed and over the past month we've had tens of thousands of voters from all over the nation. Thanks to our friends at Smithsonian Magazine. Special thanks also to Scott Belsky and his team at Behance for hosting the online design awards gallery, connecting our winners with the next generation of designers. Thank you to Corning Museum of Glass for our stunning trophies. And finally, huge thanks to John Cayman and the whole team at Radical Media for producing awesome video portraits on each of this year's winners. You're in for a real treat. I'll be back when the festivities begin. Bon appetit.