09/22/2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 4, 2025 2-4PM
Frank Lloyd Wright exhibition challenges the notion that furniture design was secondary to architectural work
Features never-before-seen constructions of Wright designed furniture
(West Bend, WI) Museum of Wisconsin Art presents Frank Lloyd Wright: Modern Chair Design, a pioneering exhibition that reveals the designer’s innovative and groundbreaking approach to furniture design. Framing his furniture within a broader context of design history and American modernism, this exhibition highlights Wright’s visionary belief that chairs must be understood as living designs in addition to being extensions of the built environments for which they were created. Presenting over forty of Wright’s most significant domestic furniture pieces—many on view for the first time—as well as working sketches, archival photographs, and animated renderings shed new light on Wright’s holistic approach to design. The exhibition will be on view October 4, 2025–January 25, 2026.
The exhibition is based on the original research of architectural historian Eric Vogel, scholar-in-residence at the Taliesin Institute whose deep-dive into the archives revealed new connections that challenge the common perception that Wright’s furniture was secondary to his architectural work. “When Wright rebuilt Taliesin after two major fires, he paired the new architecture with significant new and unprecedented furniture forms that were rejected by his clients at the time for their unconventionality,” said Vogel. “MOWA has recreated several of these lost or never-produced works, offering the viewer a unique opportunity to experience these bold forms in person.”
Viewers will experience Frank Lloyd Wright: Modern Chair Design as an experiential tour through Wright’s previously unknown furniture experiments and a comprehensive look at how one of the greatest architects of all time fundamentally shaped furniture design, working within the inspired spaces of his own home and studio. “By viewing Wright’s furniture, specifically his chair designs, through the lens of Taliesin as a creative incubator, this exhibition reveals the experimental nature of his process and offers a fresh perspective on his architectural vision,” said Thomas Szolwinski, MOWA’s Associate Curator of Architecture and Design. “In the wider history of exhibitions dedicated to Wright, this show marks an important moment of reexamination and rediscovery.”
Best known as a proponent of the Prairie School movement and for designing over 1,100 structures, Wright also created more than 200 unique chair designs—many of which have been historically overlooked or lost to time. Modern Chair Design refocuses attention to his post-Prairie School years, tracing five distinct design periods between 1911 and 1959, highlighting the innovations born at Taliesin East in Wisconsin and later at Taliesin West in Arizona.
“The Museum of Wisconsin Art is delighted to contribute new research and conversations about this iconic figure in American architecture,” said Laurie Winters, MOWA’s James and Karen Hyde Executive Director.
Exhibition highlights include collaborations with three renowned woodworkers—including Wright’s great-grandson, S. Lloyd Natof—to recreate lost or unbuilt Wright chairs using original drawings and archival materials, as well as the first-ever construction of chairs designed by Wright for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum café. The exhibition features important loans from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Frank Lloyd Wright: Modern Chair Design opens October 4, 2025 and runs through January 25, 2026. In the coming months, MOWA will announce a series of exhibition activities, lectures, and tours.
