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The xDX Project

The xDX Project is a SSHRC-funded initiative to preserve the unique history of post-war design in Canada by digitally reconstituting the former Design Exchange collection.

The Design Exchange (DX) was an institution dedicated to the promotion of Canadian design as an economic and cultural activity. Located in the historic Art Deco Stock Exchange building in the heart of Toronto’s financial district, it opened its doors in 1994. The DX began collecting postwar design in 1996 and over the years hosted exhibitions of both Canadian and international design. By acquiring, preserving, and showcasing Canadian design artefacts, the DX played a pivotal role in provoking debates about what constituted Canadian design and demonstrated the importance of design heritage for advancing both disciplinary scholarship and contemporary design practice.

In 2019, the DX abruptly ceased its museum operations and deaccessioned its entire collection. This dismantling dealt a critical blow to the mission of public education about modern Canadian material life and culture. The deaccessioned artefacts and records of the DX collection were acquired by the Canadian Museum of History, the Royal Ontario Museum, Archives of Ontario, Carleton University, and York University. These institutions, along with LINCS and the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), have been partners in the xDX Project since 2023.

The xDX dataset, developed by the xDX Project, represents the digital reconstitution of the former Design Exchange collection. It includes several archival fonds and more than 600 artefacts designed in Canada between 1940 and 2010.

Creators and Contributors​

Project Leads​

  • Jan Hadlaw, Principal Investigator, York University
  • Michael Windover, Co-Director, Carleton University
  • Aviva Weizman, Project Manager, York University
  • Rosalind Sweeney-McCabe, Research Assistant, York University

Partners​

  • York University
  • Carleton University
  • Canadian Museum of History
  • Archives of Ontario
  • Linked Infrastructure for Networked Cultural Scholarship (LINCS)
  • Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN)

Contributors​

  • Royal Ontario Museum
  • Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections, York University Libraries
  • Audio-Visual Resource Centre, School for Studies in Art and Culture, Carleton University

Funders​

  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Dataset Details​

SPARQL Queries About The Dataset​

The following query results provide insights into the classes/terms used within the dataset. (http://graph.lincsproject.ca/xdx is the named graph for the The xDX Project dataset.)

You can also refer to the application profile for this dataset for an explanation about how these classes and terms are used.

The xDX Project By The Numbers

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Classes Used By The xDX Project

The following table lists the classes used in the xDX graph, along with the number of instances of each class.

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Vocabulary Terms Used By The xDX Project

The following table lists the namespaces of vocabulary terms used in the xDX data, along with the number of unique terms from each namespace and a list of those terms.

Note that there are also

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minted LINCS entities in this dataset that serve as vocabulary terms that are not included in the list below.

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