The Cooper Hewitt Acquires Hijab Emoji and Inter-Skin Tone Emoji

The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum acquired the headscarf emoji and inter-skin tone emoji to add to its digital collections. After this, the New York museum has become the third museum in the world to add emojis in their collection.

Both the emojis have helped make the digital world a bit more diverse. Andrea Lipps, Cooper Hewitt’s associate curator of contemporary design told Associated Press, " The desire to acquire these particular emoji arose from what we were seeing as the desire for inclusion and representation of various groups and communities and couples on the emoji keyboard"

The headscarf emoji informally called the hijab emoji was submitted to the Unicode Consortium in 2016 by Rayouf Alhumedhi who was named as one of the most influential teens in 2017 by Time Magazine. On the other hand, the interracial couple emoji was submitted to Unicode in 2018 by Katrina Parrott.

According to the Associated Press, there are about 550 million women in the world who wear hijab. Alhumedhi being one of them didn't find herself represented in Whatsapp group chats. She then found out how to submit an emoji to Unicode Consortium through a Snapchat story. The same need to feel represented occurred to Parrott's daughter. That is why she made the emoji herself made a multiracial emoji and put it through her one application iDiversicons. The emoji later got promoted by dating app Tinder. Even though Parrott was not a participant in the making of the emoji she was the first one to initiate the diversity drive.

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In 2016, the Cooper Hewitt announced its acquisition of the original DoCoMo emoji set by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. DoCoMo is a Japanese mobile phone where emoji began. The Victoria & Albert Museum in London had acquired the proposed mosquito emoji design in 2018. These all are believed to part of a larger effort for museums and cultural institutions to preserve significant parts of digital history and culture.