Daniella Ohad Smith

Daniella Ohad (born 1961) is a design historian, educator, writer, and critic on 20th-century and contemporary design culture and design history, living in New York City. She publishes in various publications on interior design, design culture, and the decorative arts, such as Journal of Interior Design and Interiors: Design, Architecture, Culture, by Berg Publishers, and Journal of Interior Design, where she serves as a reader. Her interviews with designers, architects, and collectors are published regularly in such magazines as aRude, Interior Design, Designer, Cultured Magazine, and Modern. She is a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts, and for many years was a faculty member at Parsons The New School for Design. She is a regular contributor to conferences and articles on design. In recent years, Ohad Smith has hosted the only program to be devoted to collecting design. She is a member of various committees of New York City art museums, and lectures worldwide on collecting design, taste, decorative arts, and domestic culture. She is a regular contributor and an interviewee in studies and articles on design.

Family

Daniella Ohad comes from the Freuchtwanger family, the only Jewish family whose family tree dates to the 18th century; it was recently updated in 2009. She is the niece of music and theater critic, writer, and director Michael Ohad; she is the great-niece of the renowned German playwright and novelist Lion Feuchtwanger. Her family was among the founders of the Hebrew University and the banking infrastructure in pre-state Israel.

Education and career

She studied Art History at Tel Aviv University; she received Master's in Museum Studies: Decorative Arts from the Fashion Institute of Technology; she earned the Ph.D. degree from the Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture and was the first Ph.D. awarded by Bard College. Her dissertation (2006) investigates the cultural and design aspects of hotels and tourism in British Mandate Palestine. It discusses such icons as the King David Hotel, the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem, the Park Hotel in Jaffa, owned by Plato von Ustinov, grandfather of Peter Ustinov, and an unrealized hotel designed by Erich Mendelsohn in Haifa. She has published articles on such topics as T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, Louis Comfort Tiffany, various topics in domestic culture, collecting design, and the marketplace, and contributes exhibition reviews. She is a member on various committees and boards of museums, art fairs, and design conferences. Dr. Ohad is a speaker on design in conferences, and known for her stage interviews of design legends. She started her blog Daniella on Design in 2012.

Personal life

She has lived with her family in New York City since the 80s.

Awards

• Recognition by the Bruno Zevi Award

Publications