Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend, Wisconsin, about 40 miles north of Milwaukee, presents Frank Lloyd Wright: Modern Chair Design, an exhibition that explores Frank Lloyd Wright’s innovative approach to chair and furniture design.
Placed within the broader context of design history and American modernism, the exhibition emphasizes Wright’s idea that furniture should be treated as living design—integral to the architecture and the environments for which it was created.
© Museum of Wisconsin Art / Zac Gruber
The exhibition brings together more than 40 of Wright’s most important domestic furniture pieces—many exhibited for the first time—alongside working sketches, archival photographs and animated renderings that illuminate his process.
The show is grounded in original research by architectural historian Eric Vogel, scholar-in-residence at the Taliesin Institute. Vogel’s study of the Taliesin archives uncovers connections that challenge the long-held view that Wright’s furniture was secondary to his architecture.
“When Frank Lloyd Wright rebuilt Taliesin after two major fires, he paired the new architecture with inventive furniture forms that were often rejected by clients for their boldness,” Vogel said. “The Museum of Wisconsin Art has recreated several lost or never-produced pieces, giving visitors a rare chance to encounter these original forms.”
© Frank Lloyd Wright, Chair and Table, 1932, Courtesy of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
Visitors move through the exhibition as an experiential tour of Wright’s lesser-known furniture experiments, gaining insight into how his design thinking for homes and studios influenced unprecedented furniture forms.
“Framing Wright’s chairs through Taliesin as a creative incubator reveals the experimental nature of his work and offers a fresh perspective on his architectural vision,” said Thomas Szolwinski, associate curator of Architecture and Design at MOWA. “This exhibition is an important moment of reexamination and rediscovery within the history of Wright exhibitions.”
Although best known as a leading figure of the Prairie School and the architect of more than 1,100 structures, Wright also designed over 200 unique chairs—many of which were overlooked or lost. Modern Chair Design shifts focus to his post–Prairie School years, tracing five distinct design periods from 1911 to 1959 and highlighting innovations developed at Taliesin East near Spring Green, Wisconsin, and later at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona.
© Museum of Wisconsin Art / Zac Gruber
Highlights include collaborations with three master woodworkers, including Wright’s great-grandson S. Lloyd Natof, who helped recreate lost or unbuilt designs from original drawings and archival records. The exhibition also features the first-ever constructions of chairs Wright designed for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum café and significant loans from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Frank Lloyd Wright: Modern Chair Design at the Museum of Wisconsin Art will be on view through January 25, 2026.