What made Frank Lloyd Wright’s chairs controversial?

Frank Lloyd Wright’s towering affect on American design extends far past his era-defining, natural structure. His imaginative and prescient encompassed each component of an area – home windows, textiles, lighting and furnishings – with every element reflecting his ethos of unity, operate and type. Now, a brand new exhibition on the Museum of Wisconsin Artwork hones in on a specific strand of his legacy: chairs.

Frank Lloyd Wright: Trendy Chair Design, working from 4 October 2025 to 25 January 2026, asks, what makes a Wright chair? Maybe unsurprisingly, his chairs had been deeply architectural, designed not simply as seats, however to finish the spatial and visible concord of a room. They usually had geometric varieties, mirroring the buildings they inhabited; had been crafted from high-quality woods with seen joinery; and had been built-in or custom-fitted in accordance with Wright’s idea of the constructing as a ‘whole murals’. By no means thoughts human consolation, one thing Wright was criticised for throughout his time.

The exhibition options over 40 of Wright’s furnishings items – many on public show for the primary time – alongside his unique sketches, archival images and animated renderings. Collectively, they current the chair not as a peripheral design however as one of many the architect’s most distinctive – and sometimes polarising – contributions.

Whereas Wright is greatest identified for conceptualising over 1,100 constructions, he additionally created greater than 200 chairs. That this aspect of his profession is usually ignored varieties the premise of the analysis of architectural historian Eric Vogel, a scholar-in-residence on the Taliesin Institute.

‘When Wright rebuilt Taliesin [his home, studio and architecture school in Spring Green, Wisconsin] after two main fires, he paired the brand new structure with vital new and unprecedented furnishings varieties that had been rejected by his purchasers on the time for his or her unconventionality,’ factors out Vogel. A number of of those ‘misplaced or never-produced’ works have been recreated by the Museum of Wisconsin Artwork

Trendy Chair Design additionally consists of collaborations with three grasp woodworkers – together with Wright’s great-grandson, S. Lloyd Natof – who’ve reimagined misplaced or unbuilt chairs utilizing the architect’s unique drawings and archival supplies. Elsewhere, audiences can see chairs designed by Wright for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum café.

Trendy Chair Design invitations audiences to rethink Wright – as not simply an architect of buildings, however of on a regular basis expertise. Via the lens of the ostensibly humble chair, the exhibition reveals a designer who approached even essentially the most practical objects with audacity and imaginative and prescient.