Art + Furniture: Designers, Makers, and Advocates
Curated by Thomas Mellins and Donald Albrecht, the show opens September 24, 2026, at the New York School of Interior Design and highlights twenty artists who redefined furniture as art.
Round the World by Richard Snyder
Photo credit: Matthew Gordon. Courtesy of Superhouse and Richard Snyder.
Curated by Thomas Mellins and Donald Albrecht, the exhibition Art + Furniture: Designers, Makers, and Advocates will be presented in the New York School of Interior Design Gallery from September 25, 2026 through April 2, 2027. The show will explore the art and studio furniture movements’ origins, contributions, and legacies in the closing decades of the 20th century. Intentionally blurring the distinction between fine art and useful objects, as well as between design and craft, the artists featured challenged traditional ways of exhibiting and selling work, giving rise to a new generation of gallerists and entrepreneurs.
They embraced a bold concept of what furniture could be. At the same time, they responded to the city they called home. New York in the late 1970s was a metropolis in crisis. Yet with adversity came a positive edge: avant-garde art, music, fashion, and design flourished. Amidst challenges to modernist “good taste,” many artists and craftspeople flocked to New York’s formerly industrial SoHo neighborhood, attracted to its atmosphere of artistic freedom, as well as to its commodious and comparatively affordable live/work spaces.
The exhibition showcases furniture, related objects, and photographs of twenty artists: Rafael Barrios, Wendell Castle, Jim Cole, Laura Johnson Drake, David N. Ebner, Dan Friedman, James Hong, Thomas Hucker, Elizabeth Browning Jackson, Dakota Jackson, Donald Judd, Alex Locadia, Tom Loeser, Terence Main and Main + Main, Wendy Maruyama, Howard Meister, Forrest Myers, Michele Oka Doner, Gaetano Pesce, and Richard Snyder.
The exhibition will be accompanied by the forthcoming book Art + Furniture: An Oral History of the American Furniture Movement, published by Abbeville Press and created and edited by architect Dennis Miller. The exhibition is designed by Studio Joseph and produced by Poleschuk Design.
Burning Bush by Michele Oka Doner
Photo credit: Matthew Gordon. Courtesy of Superhouse and Michele Oka Doner.
Frond Chair 7 by Terence Main
Photo credit: ©EMILIE_BALTZ for Magen H Gallery.
DOWNLOAD HIGH-RESOLUTION IMAGES here.
About the Curators
Thomas Mellins has written extensively about New York City’s architecture and urbanism. He also has curated exhibitions for such cultural institutions as the New York Public Library and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Donald Albrecht creates exhibitions, books, and essays, often for public institutions, that explore a wide range of topics from broad overviews of cultural trends to in-depth profiles of visual and performing artists.