Steven Skov Holt

Steven Skov Holt (September 24, 1957– August 13, 2015) was an American design writer, curator, educator and industrial designer. He is known for an interdisciplinary practice that posited the ascension of design as the most significant late-20th- and 21st-century form of public art, and more specifically, elaborated its shift toward forms that were more fluid, biomorphic, hybridized, emotional and culturally literate.

Holt's curatorial projects appeared at museums including the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), San Jose Museum of Art and Museum of Contemporary Craft (Portland). He contributed essays, articles and columns to books and magazines such as ARTnews, ID and Metropolis, as well as commentary on design trends to The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Esquire, and NPR, among others. Holt co-wrote two books, Blobjects & Beyond: The New Fluidity in Design (2005) and Manufractured: The Conspicuous Transformation of Everyday Objects (2008), with his wife, art and design historian Mara Holt Skov. He was a professor for more than two decades in the product design and industrial design departments at the Parsons School of Design and California College of the Arts, respectively. He died in San Francisco on August 13, 2015.