Collection - York University xDX collection F0822

Majority of contents were previously a portion of the permanent collection of the Design Exchange, which was deaccessioned in 2019 under the leadership of CEO Razor Suleman. Jan Hadlaw, a professor in York's Department of Design, selected objects for teaching at York University that were not acquired by the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Archives of Ontario, Carleton University and other cultural institutions. Hadlaw incorporated the collection into her teaching, using the collection as part of student assignments, and has reorganized material and developed additional descriptive information regarding the objects.

In order to facilitate its preservation, discovery, and use for research and teaching, the York University xDX Collection was transferred to York University Libraries under the terms of a Memorandum of Understanding signed by Professor Hadlaw as Principal Investigator/Co-director of the xDX Project and the Interim Dean of Libraries in May 2024.

Collection consists of examples of Canadian commercial and industrial design, previously part of the permanent collection of the Design Exchange, a cultural design centre based in downtown Toronto. These objects form the core of "The xDX Project: Documenting, Linking, and Interpreting Canada's Design Heritage" a research project that was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada in 2023 to reconstitute the Design Exchange's design museum through a digital repository and linked open data.