Collecting Ourselves – The Objects of Martin House
March 27  – September 7, 2026

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House went from a meticulously designed and executed family home that Wright described as his “opus” to decades of abandonment and disrepair to becoming one of the premier house museums in the United States.  While the structural restoration and reconstruction get the majority of the attention in these types of projects, the role of collecting lost art glass, furniture, art work, and ephemera has generally received less attention. In the case of the Martin House, archives and collections perform critical roles in the restoration work, given that the majority of these objects were designed or selected by Wright himself specifically for this house and are critical for understanding the importance of the home, but were mostly removed in the period leading up to the restoration effort.

Collecting Ourselves will, for the first time, focus on the process and ongoing nature of collections work at the Martin House.  It will take a deep dive into how these items were lost, where they ended up, how we’ve re-obtained them, and what the future of collecting at the Martin House might hold.

This exhibition will allow us to showcase the generosity of donors who have gifted items back to the Martin House over the years, will include loans of materials from museums that currently have Martin House items in their collections, a look at the museums who hold Martin House items and what those items mean to those institutions, a behind the scenes peek at ongoing collection conservation efforts, and public programming around house museums and collections efforts.

Presented by M&T Bank and Wilmington Trust. This project is also supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.