The Museum of Wisconsin Art has put on Frank Lloyd Wright: Modern Chair Design, an exhibition focused on Frank Lloyd Wright‘s furniture designs, with a number of replicas created for the show.
Frank Lloyd Wright: Modern Chair Design features more than thirty chairs designed by the late American architect, pinpointing chairs as an overlooked and important part of his practice.
Ranging from the 1900s to the late 1950s, the exhibition traces the changes and consistencies of Wright’s design through the 20th century.
Frank Lloyd Wright: Modern Chair Design features the chair designs of the American architect
It includes both historical pieces made during Wright’s time as well as recreations of pieces, including the production of some chairs that were designed but never brought to reality.
These include designs created for his AD German Warehouse building and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
The curators wanted to highlight the chair design as an essential part of Wright’s reshaping of American design.
Historical pieces feature alongside reproductions
“Wright’s chairs offer a fascinating lens into both his evolving design philosophy and the changing nature of American domestic life,” curator of architecture and design for Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA) Thomas Szolwinski told Dezeen.
“Early in his career, his furniture reflected the Arts and Crafts ideal – solid, handcrafted, and designed for large, often luxurious homes.”
“As his work progressed through the Taliesin and Usonian periods, his designs became lighter, more modular, and more attuned to the realities of modern living,” Szolwinski added.
“He favoured efficiency, flexibility, and new materials like plywood, aligning with broader cultural shifts toward informality and efficiency in the American home.”
The exhibition highlighted the importance of chairs in Wright’s design
Szolwinski and co-curator Eric Vogel worked for years in the archives to understand the trajectory of the chair design Wright developed for his architecture.
They worked with woodworkers, including S Lloyd Natof, Wright’s great-grandson, to recreate some of the lost work based on images.
Twelve such chairs were recreated explicitly for the exhibition, including an armchair for the James Kibben Ingalls House in River Forest, Illinois. The team also recreated the Café Table designed for the Guggenheim Museum.
How The Studio’s production team created a convincing Frank Lloyd Wright building
“Created in partnership with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and the Taliesin Institute, these newly fabricated works are shown alongside thirty historic pieces to present a more complete view of Wright’s design trajectory,” said Szolwinski.
“The project treats fabrication not as replication, but as a form of research – an active investigation into Wright’s process, philosophy, and evolving material language.”
The chairs were organised in chronological order in the exhibition, with contextual text noting the origin of the designs.
It featured designs ranging from the 1910s to the 1950s
Other standouts from the exhibition include the cane-panelled armchair for the Emil Bach House, Chicago, and the Origami armchairs designed for Wright’s studio at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Wright’s work has remained a constant fascination for designers, and firms have both used the designs to recreate the work for commercial use, such as a batch of recreations by Steelcase.
The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation has also used motifs from the architect to collaborate with contemporary brands, seen in a pair of New Balance/Kith shoes that use colours from his personal palette.
Frank Lloyd Wright: Modern Chair Design is on from 4 October 2025 to 26 January 2026. For more events, exhibitions and talks in architecture and design, visit Dezeen Events Guide.