Download PDF (215 K)WENDELL CASTLE
American, b. 1932
Education
1961 University of Kansas, Sculpture MFA
1958 University of Kansas, Industrial Design BFA
Grants and Honors
2007 Lifetime Achievement Award, Brooklyn Museum of Art
2003 Outstanding Achievement Award. The National Association of Schools of Art & Design, Los Angeles, CA
2002 Distinguished Achievement Award. University of Kansas School of Fine Arts, Manhattan, KS
1999 Master of the Medium, The James Renwick Alliance of The National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC
1994 Visionaries of the American Craft Movement, American Craft Museum.
1988 Visual Artists Fellowship Grant, National Endowment for the Arts
1979 Honorary Degree, Doctor of Fine Arts, Sculptor/Designer, Maryland Institute of Art
1976-75, 73 National Endowment for the Arts Grant(s)
1972 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant
Selected Solo Exhibits
2006-04 Wendell Castle in Rochester, Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY
2004 Wendell Castle: Auto Plastic, R20th Century, New York, NY
2003 Wendell Castle: Seeing in the Dark, Wexler Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2001 Wendell Castle, Bausch & Lomb, Rochester, NY
2000 Furniture by Wendell Castle, Kendall College of Art & Design, Grand Rapids, MI
1996 One Man Exhibit, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA
1995 Works by Wendell Castle, Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, FL
Art Furniture by Wendell Castle, Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL
One-Man Exhibit, Chang Gallery, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS
Wendell Castle: Cabinets 1985 - 1995, A Retrospective Exhibition, Peter Joseph Gallery, New York, NY
1994 Ambiguous Objecthood: New Furniture and Drawings by Wendell Castle, Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, MA
Wendell Castle: Coming to Grips, Morgan Gallery, Kansas City, MO
New Work by Wendell Castle, Carleton Art Gallery, Carleton College, Northfield, MN
1993 Wendell Castle: Environmental Works, Peter Joseph Gallery, New York, NY
Wendell Castle: Select Early Works (1971-75), Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York, NY
1991 Angel Chairs: New Work by Wendell Castle, Peter Joseph Gallery, New York, NY
1991-89 Furniture of Wendell Castle, (Traveling retrospective exhibit: Detroit Institute of Arts; American Craft Museum; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Delaware Art Museum; Memorial Art Gallery)
1989 Wendell Castle: New Work, Snyderman Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
1988 Wendell Castle: A Decade 1977-1987, Alexander Milliken Gallery, New York, NY
1986 Time and Defiance of Gravity: Recent Works by Wendell Castle, Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, MA
________, Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY
Wendell Castle. Works in Plastic, 1968-1970, 20th Century Gallery, Toronto, Canada
Wendell Castle. Sculpture? Furniture? The Vanishing Line, Fendrick Gallery, Washington, D.C.
1986-85 Masterpieces of Time, The Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
1985 ________, Taft Museum, Cincinnati, OH
1980 Furniture As Art II, Fendrick Gallery, Washington, D.C.
1969 The Furniture of Wendell Castle, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS
State University of New York, Cortland, NY
1966-65 Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY
1962 Inaugural Show, Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, Dartmouth, NH
Louisville Art Association, Louisville, KY
Ithaca College Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY
Scudder Gallery, University of New Hampshire
Selected Group Exhibitions
2008 New Work by Wendell Castle: Works on Paper by Chuck Close, Wexler Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2007 Shy Boy, She Devil, and Isis: The Art of Conceptual Craft, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
2007 Not Furniture: XXI Design, Hedge Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2006 Pop Art and Its Affinities, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
2005 Recent Acquisitions, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS
Good Heart, Gerald Peters Gallery, Sante Fe, NM
2005-04 Black & White, Galerie von Bartha, Basel, Switzerland
2004 Outrageous Home, The Hunterdon Museum of Art, Clinton, NJ
The White House Collection of American Crafts, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, GA
Summer Group Show, Marlborough Gallery, New York, NY
Right at Home: American Studio Furniture, Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.
The Perfect Collection: A Shared Vision of Contemporary Craft, The Fuller Museum, Brockton, MA
2003 Corporal Identity-Body Language, Museum of Arts & Design, New York, NY
The Maker's Hand: American Studio Furniture, 1940-1990, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Kanazawa World Craft Forum 2003, Kanazawa, Japan
Triennial 9 Form & Contents: Corporal Identity-Body Language, Museum Für Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany
Teasing the Eye: Crafted Illusions, The Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Significant Objects from the Modern Design Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
2002 Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe L'Oeil Painting, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Embellished with Gold, Decorative Arts Museum, Little Rock, AK
2001 Objects for Use: Handmade by Design, American Craft Museum, New York, NY
Contemporary Craft in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
2000-1997 Designed for Delight: Alternative Aspects of Twentieth-Century
1999 Recent Acquisitions. Decorative Arts. (Traveling exhibition: Musée des Art Décoratifs, Paris, France; Die Neue Sammlung, Munich, Germany; J.B. Speed Museum; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Cincinnati Art Museum; Canadian Museum of Civilization; Montreal Museum of Decorative Arts)
1999-95 The White House Collection of American Crafts, (Traveling exhibition: Mint Museum; Delaware Art Museum; Tampa Museum of Art; Colby College Museum of Art; Art Museum of Western Virginia; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; American Craft Museum; Rochester Memorial Art Gallery; The Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.)
The Handmade: shifting paradigms, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore
Recent Acquisitions of Furniture, The Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
1997 Renwick at 25, Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Celebrating American Craft, The Danish Museum of Decorative Art, Copenhagen, Denmark
1997-96 Four Decades of Discovery: The 40th Anniversary of the American Craft Museum, American Craft Museum, New York, NY
1996 New Furniture: Beyond Form and Function, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY
Wendell Castle and Nancy Jurs: A Marriage of Life and Art, Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE
1996-95 Breaking Barriers: Recent American Craft, (Traveling exhibition: American Craft Museum; Museum of Art, Albany, GA; Madison Art Center; Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR)
1995 Art for Everyday, Wharton Esherick Museum, Paoli, PA
Please Be Seated: Masters of the Art of Seating, The Henry Morrison Flagler Museum, Palm Beach, FL
1994 The Object of Pop, Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York, NY
1993 Furniture Fantasy, Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, PA
1993-91 Design 1935-1965: What Modern Was, (Traveling exhibition: Canadian Museum of Civilization; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Baltimore Museum of Art; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; Toledo Museum of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
1992 Craft Today: USA, The Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal
1992-89 Crafted Today USA, (Traveling exhibition: The Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; Sala Sant Jaume de la Fundacio La Caixa, Barcelona, Spain; The Grassi Museum, Leipzig, Germany; Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava, Slovakia; Eommex Cultural Center-Zapperion, Athens, Greece; American Haus, Berlin, Germany; St. Peter's Abbey, Ghent, Belgium; The Oslo Museum of Applied Art, Oslo, Norway; Ataturk Cultural Center, Ankara, Turkey; Museum of Applied Arts, Moscow, Russia; Musée des Art Décoratifs, Lausanne, Switzerland; Zacheta Gallery, Warsaw, Poland; Museum Für Kunsthandwerk, Frankfurt, Germany; Taidetollisuusmustoi, Helsinki, Finland; Musée des Art Décoratifs, Paris, France)
1991 1991 Kanazawa Gran-Prix Arts & Crafts Competition, Kanazawa Culture Hall Gallery, Kanazawa, Japan
Masterworks, Peter Joseph Gallery, New York, NY
1991-87 The Eloquent Object: the Evolution of American Art in Craft Media since 1945, (Traveling exhibition: Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan; Virginia Museum of Fine Art; Orlando Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Oakland Museum)
1989 Artful Objects: Recent American Crafts, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN
1988 Clockwork!, List Visual Arts Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, MA
1988-86 Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical, (Traveling exhibition: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; J.B. Speed Art Museum; Milwaukee Art Museum; The Denver Art Museum; American Craft Museum)
1988, The World of Art, Today, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI
1987 New Work: Wendell Castle, Garry Knox Bennet, Fred Baier, Alexander Milliken Gallery, New York, NY
________, A Gallery, Palm Desert, CA
1987-85 Material Evidence, New Color Techniques in Handmade Furniture, The Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
1985 High Styles: Twentieth-Century American Design, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
1983 Ornamentalism: The New Decorativeness in Architecture and Design, Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY
1980 Sitting in Style, The Society of Arts and Crafts, Boston, MA
________, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
1980-79 New Handmade Furniture, Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York, NY
1979 Paley/Castle, Wildenhain, Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY
1977 American Crafts 1977/ The Philadelphia Craft Show, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Drawing Show, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY
1976 American Crafts '76, an Aesthetic View, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL
1976-75 Craft Multiplies, The Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.1974-73
1974-73 Innovations: Contemporary Home Environs, La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA
1972 Woodenworks: Furniture Objects by Five Contemporary Craftsmen, The Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
________, Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul, MN
1972-69 Objects USA: The Johnson Collection of Contemporary Crafts, (Traveling exhibition: Smithsonian American Art Museum, University of Rochester; Cranbrook Academy of Art; Cincinnati Art Museum; St. Paul Art Center; Seattle Art Museum; Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
1970 Attitudes, The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
Environments for Contemplation, Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York, NY
1966 Wendell Castle, Wharton Esherick, Sam Maloof, Marcello Grassman, Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Fantasy Furniture, Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York, NY
Internationals Kunsthandwerk, 1966, Stuttgart, Germany
1964 United States of America Section at the 13th Triennale, Milan, Italy
The American Craftsman, Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York, NY
1962 1962 Young Americans, Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York, NY
Selected Museum Collections
Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Atlanta High Museum, Atlanta, GA
The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA
Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH
The Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, New York, NY
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE
Design Museum Ghent, Ghent, Belgium
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI
Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, TN
The Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, UK
Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI
Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC
The Minneapolis Institute of Fine Arts, Minneapolis, MN
Museum of Art, St. Louis, MO
The Museum of Art and Design, New York, NY
Museum of Decorative Arts, Montreal, Canada
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
Museum of Modern Art, Design Collection, New York, NY
Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseet, Oslo, Norway
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
The Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI
Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS
Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH
The White House Collection of American Crafts, Washington D.C.
The Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS
Selected Corporate Collections
American Express, New York, NY
Bausch & Lomb, Rochester, NY
DuPont Center, Orlando, FL
Forbes Company, New York, NY
Gannett Corporation, Washington D.C.
Gilman Foundation, New York, NY
Monroe County-Greater Rochester International Airport, Rochester, NY
Nations Bank, Atlanta, GA
Steinway Company, Long Island City, NY
Sydney Bestoff, New Orleans, LA
Wolfsonian Foundation, Miami Beach, FL
The White House Collection of American Crafts, Washington D.C.
Selected Bibliography
Albrecht, Donald. Auto Plastic: Wendell Castle. New York: R20th Century, 2005.
Bates, Elizabeth Bidwell and Jonathan Fairbanks. American Furniture, 1620 to the Present. New York: Richard Marek Publishing, 1987.
Busch, Akiko and Paul J. Smith. Objects for Use: Handmade by Design. New York: Harry H. Abrams, Inc., 2001.
Conway, Patricia. Art for Everyday. New York: Clarkson Potter Publishers, 1990.
Conway, Patricia and Robert Jensen. Ornamentalism: The New Decorativeness in Architecture and Design. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1982.
Danto, Arthur C. The Endowed Chair. New York: Franklin Parrasch Gallery, 1992.
Domergue, Denise. Artists Design Furniture. New York: Harry H. Abrams, Inc., 1984.
Fiell, Charlotte and Peter. Design and the 20th Century. Germany: Taschen, 1999.
________. 1,000 Chairs. Germany: Taschen, 1997.
Garner, Philippe. Contemporary Decorative Arts. England: Phaidon Press, Ltd., 1980.
Giovanni, Joseph and Davira S. Taragin. Furniture by Wendell Castle. Edited by Edward S. Cooke. New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with The Founders Society, Detroit Institute of Arts. Distributed by Rizzoli International Publications, 1989.
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. New Furniture: Beyond Form and Function. Edited by Sara Benson. New York: Cornell University Press, 1996.
Herman, Lloyd and Matthew Kangas. Tales and Traditions: Storytelling in Twentieth Century American Craft. Missouri: Craft Alliance, 1993.
Joseph, Peter T. and Matthew Kangas. Wendell Castle: Environmental Works. New York: Peter Joseph Gallery, 1993.
Kangas, Matthew. Breaking Barriers: Recent American Craft. New York: American Craft Museum, 1995.
Manhart, Marcia and Tom. The Eloquent Object: The Evolution of American Art in Craft Media Since 1945. Oklahoma: The Tulsa Museum of Art, 1987.
Miller, R. Craig. Modern Design in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Harry H. Abrams, Inc., 1991.
Milwaukee Art Museum. 1988, The World of Art, Today. Wisconsin: Milwaukee Art Museum, 1988.
Monroe, Michael W. The White House Collection of American Crafts. New York: Harry H. Abrams, Inc., 1995.
Newman, Thelma R. Plastics as Sculptures. Pennsylvania: Chilton Press, 1974.
Nordess, Lee. Objects USA. New York: Viking Press, 1970.
diNoto, Andrea. Art Plastic: Designed for Living. New York: Abeville Press, 1984.
Simpson, Tommy. Hand and Home: The Homes of American Craftsmen. Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Co., 1994.
Smith, Edward Lucie. Artoday. England: Phaidon, 1995.
________. American Art Now. New York: William Morrow Publishers, 1985.
________. Art in the Seventies. New York: Cornell University Press, 1980.
________. Furniture: A Concise History. England: Oxford University Press, 1979.
________ and Paul Smith. Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical. England: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1986.
Smith, Paul. Introduction to Craft Today USA, by The American Craft Council and Museum. New York: The American Craft Council and Museum, 1989.
Williams, Gerry, ed. Apprenticeship in Craft. New Hampshire: Daniel Clark Books, 1981.