Norman Teague’s overarching goal extends beyond the mere act of design: it is a mission to rectify the narratives of design that falter with gaps, omissions, and oversights. His work seeks to reintegrate the history and ongoing contributions of foundational Black labor, Black craftsmanship, and Black design into our collective cultural identity. In this pursuit, Teague engages in a thoughtful dialogue with overlooked figures such as Chuck Harrison, the trailblazing African American head of design for Sears Roebuck. Harrison’s legacy—defined by his creation of over 750 products integral to postwar American consumer life, including iconic items like Craftsman power tools and the beloved Viewmaster—serves as a source of inspiration and connection for Teague’s pedagogy.
In 2024–25, Teague curated Designer’s Choice: Jam Sessions, a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. The exhibition reimagined iconic design objects through the lens of generative AI, cultural memory, and Black craft, creating new dialogues within the museum’s permanent collection and challenging the boundaries of design history.
Teague also participated in Everlasting Plastics, the 2023 United States pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. His work examined the extractive dynamic between the global North and South, in which exploited petroleum eventually returns to the South as ever-accumulating streams of plastic waste. Reinventing a method of extruding consumer plastic into colored coils inspired by Ghanaian Bolga and Agaseke basket weavings, Teague created vibrant vessel forms that elevate petrochemical detritus through craft, allowing them to be viewed as art companions to the age-old craft of basketry, while simultaneously signaling an Afro-Futurist, dystopian aesthetic.
