Michelle Obama, a longtime patron of up-and-coming fashion designers and a driving force behind the introduction of challenging contemporary art into the White House, will fete winners and finalists of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum 2010 National Design Awards at a ceremony at the first family's official home.

The program, introduced in 2000 as a part of the White House’s Millennium Council initiative, bestows each award on a firm or an individual artist to honor a body of work, and, according to press materials, "celebrates design in various disciplines as a vital humanistic tool in shaping the world, and seeks to increase national awareness of design by educating the public and promoting excellence, innovation, and lasting achievement."

Nominations come from over 2,500 leaders of every imaginable design-focused field, and winners are then selected by a diverse jury (this year’s was composed of everyone from the global director of GE to the creative director of J. Crew). The lifetime achievement award will go to Jane Thompson, founding editor of I.D. magazine and pioneer of urban revitalization; and Ralph Caplan (another I.D. alum) will be celebrated for his “design mind,” and, no doubt for his scholarship, as he has penned books with such titillating titles as "By Design: Why There Are No Locks on the Bathroom Doors in the Hotel Louis XIV."

Tribute will also be paid — at an October dinner at Cipriani in New York as well as at this week’s event at the White House — to luminaries from the worlds of architecture, fashion, landscape, product, communication, and interaction design, as well as corporate and institutional achievement. And for the aspiring designer, a teen fair will be offered in D.C. on July 21 with highlights such as a keynote address by Bravo darling Tim Gunn.