MOWA Offers Another Side of Frank Lloyd Wright

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Courtesy of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation

Frank Lloyd Wright's "Chair and Table"

Frank Lloyd Wright, Chair and Table, for the Tree Room, Taliesin Fellowship Complex, Spring Green, Wisconsin, designed 1932; fabricated 2025 by Current Projects, Cypress plywood. Museum of Wisconsin Art, West Bend

Even some of the most ardent Frank Lloyd Wright fans know little about one of the most significant aspects of the 20th century American architect’s storied career—furniture design. The Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA) in West Bend aims to rectify the situation with its upcoming exhibit “Frank Lloyd Wright: Modern Chair Design.” This unique exploration of 40 of the hundreds of pieces of furniture designed by Wright during his career opens Oct. 4 and will be on display through Jan. 26, 2026. 

The exhibit, co-curated by Thomas Szolwinski, MOWA’s associate curator of architecture and design, and Eric Vogel, an architect and immediate past scholar-in-residence at the Taliesin Institute in Scottsdale, Ariz., takes a deeper look at what Vogel describes as the “softer” or more feminine side of architectural design. It’s also a subject that, despite the literally hundreds of books written about the famous architect in multiple languages, received little to no scholarly attention either during Wright’s career or since his death in 1959.

While in Scottsdale, Vogel, former chair of the 3D Design Department at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, was given open access to the institute’s archives so he could study Wright’s furniture and help MOWA exhibit viewers better understand this largely unexplored aspect of the architect, who was born in Richland Center in 1867. 

“I first became interested in Wright’s furniture design when I was researching the Burnam Block of homes and came across one sketch of an ungainly wooden chair with a padded seat,” Vogel says. 

American System Homes 

The Burnam Block was a test neighborhood of four duplexes and two bungalows located in the 2700 block of West Burnam St. at South Layton Blvd. in Milwaukee. The structures were part of the American System-Built Homes series, Wright’s earliest attempt to create affordable housing through pre-cut ready-to-assemble pieces. The experiment lasted from 1911-1917, predating Wright’s later Usonian Period and ending when Wright successfully sued his business partner Arthur Robinson for past royalty payments due. Little has been written about it since. 

However, the period marked the first phase of furniture design for Wright, who continued to produce furniture drawings for other architectural projects through five different architectural periods up to and including New York’s Guggenheim Museum, the architect’s last commission prior to his death.  

Wright’s furniture is an extension of and integrated with the building for which each piece was designed. The architect emphasized simplicity and geometric forms and, whenever possible, created from organic materials native to the area for which the building was designed. In the end, the furniture stood as an extension of that design and contributed to the style and artistry of the entire project. 

“For ‘Modern Chair Design,’ Eric Vogel’s research into the architect’s archive unearthed new details and brought forth new concepts about his approach to the design of everyday objects,” Szolwinski says. “Works in the exhibition are displayed alongside related Wright drawings and archival photographs, allowing visitors to see how these objects were originally conceived.” 

The exhibit includes not only actual Wright furniture pieces on loan from other museums and institutes, but also 11 chairs and tables either fabricated for the first time or recreated based on historical documentation, enabling the museum exhibit to fill in critical gaps in the continuum of Wright’s furniture design. 

“Wright was doing daring and idiosyncratic furniture that whole time in different design ‘languages’, all of which aligned with his architectural principles and the nature of the buildings he was designing,” Vogel says.  

Wright designed freestanding furniture, including, chairs, tables and beds, as well as “built-ins” such as desks and cabinets. Lessons learned by artists and craftsmen who created the exhibit included both visual and fabrication analysis, Vogel says, which offers a unique experience for those coming to view the exhibit. “It will change viewers’ understanding of the exhibition,” he adds. 

There’s another question that many who have had the chance to sit in Wright-designed chairs, either for a concert at the Hillside Theater on the Taliesin campus near Spring Green, or dining at the former Riverview Terrace Restaurant—the only restaurant the architect ever designed—overlooking the Wisconsin River that now serves as the Taliesin Vistors Center often bring up in discussion. Almost in counterpoint to his enormous talent, Wright was small of stature. Official bios have given him a height of 5’ 8”, but friends confided that he was 4’11” tall. Whatever the case, his beautifully designed chairs don’t often rank high on the comfort meter, Vogel agreed. 

“The architect must be the master in the interior sense, not only of his tools, not only of his materials, but also of the human spirit,” Vogel explained. “The soul of humanity is in his charge and Wright used scale in a specific way he believed created a sense of authority and a sense of comfort.” 

Perhaps Frank Lloyd Wright himself said it most clearly and honestly: “I don’t design chairs to be comfortable for people,” the architect is quoted as saying. “I design chairs to dignify man.” 

“Frank Lloyd Wright: Modern Chair Design” will be on display Oct. 4 through Jan. 26, 2026, at the Museum of Wisconsin Art, 205 Veterans Ave., West Bend. For more information, visit wisconsinart.org.