Over the past twenty years, Elaine Manna has designed, and managed design projects, for major museums, corporations, and individuals throughout the United States. An ongoing core of Elaine's exceptional work has been in museum display design and mount-making, and her clients include such top institutions as the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, Museum of American Financial History, the National Museum of the American Indian, the New York Philharmonic, Oakland Museum, Rockefeller University, the Smithsonian, South Street Seaport Museum, The Jewish Museum,in New York, and The Newark Museum. Corporate clients include Panasaonic and UBS, among many others. (Click here for a complete list of clients of Elaine Manna Design.)
Increasingly over time, Elaine is applying the skills and standards that she has honed over many years in the museum and corporate worlds to serve private clients as well. For more on Elaine's interior design work, please click here: Interior Design
Elaine's exceptional design work reflects many of the values of the Arts and Crafts and International styles that inspired the founders of Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield, Michigan, "the cradle of American modernism," where Elaine received her Masters in Fine Arts. Cranbrook's artistic community has, since the academy was founded in 1932, included many world class artists, architects and designers, including Eero and Eliel Saarinen, Ray and Charles Eames, Florence Knoll, Jack Lenor Larsen, Donald Lipski, Duane Hanson and Hani Rashid. It was in this artistic community that Elaine found inspiration, developed her foundation, and committed to the design values that have driven her astonishing career.
Saarinen House Dining Room at Cranbrook, designed by Eliel Saarinen 1928-30, restoration 1993-94. Courtesy Balthazar Korab/Cranbrook Art Museum. Elaine received her Master's Degree in Fine Arts from Cranbrook after completing her undergraduate work in studio art at Connecticut College.
Today, Elaine is turning her attention and talent increasingly toward interior design, both for the home and for businesses. For the New York apartment pictured below, Elaine's virtuosic design abilities were applied not only to the overall interior design, but also to individual elements including the custom-designed flooring, rugs, and sofa.