![\"Bruce](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/ctc-l-keegan-01112610_257919150.jpg\")
Bruce Goff\u2019s unbuilt 1961 design for the Viva Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas in the exhibition “Bruce Goff: Material Worlds” at the Art Institute of Chicago, Jan. 9, 2026. (E. Jason Wambsgans\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\nBruce Goff\u2019s work is profoundly weird. His wildly outrageous 1947-48 Myron Bachman House in Uptown wraps masonry and corrugated metal around a modest 1889 wood house in a manner that foreshadows Frank Gehry\u2019s house in Santa Monica.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And the Bachman House, a Chicago Landmark since 1992, is a relatively sedate work within Goff\u2019s oeuvre.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That\u2019s made clear in the new exhibition \u201cBruce Goff: Material Worlds\u201d at the Art Institute of Chicago through March 29.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Providing context for such idiosyncratic work isn\u2019t easy. But it\u2019s a task deftly tackled by curators Harold and Margot Schiff, Alison Fisher and Craig Lee.\u00a0<\/p>\n
More than 200 works are displayed, including architectural drawings and models, paintings and \u201crealia\u201d \u2014 objects of all sorts collected by Goff throughout his life for creative inspiration and everyday decoration. Some 80% of the work shown is drawn from the Art Institute\u2019s extensive Goff archives.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Goff was born in Kansas in 1904 and was a child prodigy, starting his career with a firm in Tulsa at the age of 12 and producing a significant body of work there before moving to Chicago in 1934. He was an architectural vagabond, following job opportunities across the Great Plains throughout his life. But he is mostly closely associated with Oklahoma, where he directed the architecture school at the University of Oklahoma from 1947 to 1955, despite his own lack of academic training. While Goff\u2019s work was mostly located outside the established cultural capitals, he was hardly an unknown during his lifetime. His houses were featured in such prominent periodicals as Life magazine in the 1950s and Vogue in 1972.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The precocious young Goff corresponded with Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright early in his career. Both encouraged him to skip architecture school, advice that he followed. And unlike most architects who would come to define \u201cmodern\u201d architecture, neither Sullivan nor Wright was a minimalist; neither was Goff.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The quote, \u201cOne doesn\u2019t invent a new architecture every Monday morning,\u201d is often attributed to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Goff was committed to creating a new architecture every day of the week. His work embodies highbrow and lowbrow materials through a time in the 20th century when architecture was trending hard toward highbrow minimalism.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The exhibit opens with some of the most atypical elements \u2014 selections of realia from Goff\u2019s extensive personal collections. A mini disco ball, shag carpeting samples and assorted glass cullets, which are broken or waste glass, set the stage for the architect\u2019s unorthodox work.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A cathedral sketch from 1914 when Goff would have been 10 years old demonstrates his early talent that would lead him to a professional job just two years later. Two unbuilt works from his teens, the carefully designed and rendered \u201cA Modern House of the Midwest Type\u201d from 1919, demonstrates his early enthusiasm for Wright, while the Grant McCullough Mausoleum from the following year builds on Louis Sullivan\u2019s work.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The amazingly mature art deco-derived Boston Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church South in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was designed by Goff in 1928 while he was still at Rush, Endacott and Rush architects. He\u2019s 24 at this time, an age when most architects are still in school.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Goff\u2019s most iconic work is the Eugene and Nancy Bavinger House in Norman, Oklahoma, from 1950. An eccentric wood and steel door hints at the residence\u2019s remarkable forms. An intricately rendered plan, elevation and interior perspective illustrate the soaring frenzy of space within the house\u2019s logarithmic spiral.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The stunning unbuilt Viva Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas from 1961 looks as if the Jetsons held a circus at a parking garage. His last major public commission, completed after his death in 1982 by colleague Bart Prince, is the Pavilion for Japanese Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Its strikingly unusual forms might have risen from the ooze of the adjacent La Brea Tar Pits.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bruce Goff\u2019s unbuilt 1961 design for the Viva Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas in the exhibition “Bruce Goff: Material Worlds” at the Art Institute of Chicago, Jan. 9, 2026. (E. Jason Wambsgans\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n
Goff spoke of the \u201ccontinuous present\u201d \u2014 a term used by curator Pauline Saliga as the title for the last major retrospective of Goff\u2019s work at the Art Institute in 1995. With 30 years hindsight, it\u2019s even easier to see the applicability of this term. While the work is constantly changing based on program and client, it\u2019s hard to date each project and even harder to decipher the progression.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Goff\u2019s vision remains singular more than 40 years after his death. His work is marked by unusual, even bizarre, material choices that encrust spatial compositions reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright\u2019s innovative open space plans. Complex geometries are deployed to resolve atypical spaces including triangles, circles and quadrilaterals that defy conventional rectangular rooms, or furnishings. His work can sometimes seem like a bit of an architectural freak show, worthy of an HGTV series more than a museum exhibition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It hasn\u2019t always been properly appreciated. Goff\u2019s best-known project, the Bavinger House, was demolished in 2016, despite widespread acclaim that included the American Institute of Architect\u2019s 25-Year Award in 1987 and listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBruce Goff: Material Worlds\u201d is not your typical architecture exhibit, much as Goff was not your typical architect. Fundamentally, it\u2019s a show about stuff: the stuff of creativity, the stuff of life and the stuff of an accomplished hoarder. And while the curators have definitely taken chances with how they\u2019ve presented the material, the installation feels a bit too conservative for the work. A truer representation of Goff would have been a little less tidy and shown even more of his fascinating stuff. The installation 30 years ago, placed within the old horseshoe-shaped architecture and design galleries, was far more kinetic. Some of that spatial energy and drama would have added to this exhibit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You may love the work, you may hate the work, but if you care even a little bit about design, you should get to the Art Institute before it closes, because this is architecture that surprises and challenges.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Edward Keegan writes, broadcasts and teaches on architectural subjects. Keegan\u2019s biweekly architecture column is supported by a grant from former Tribune critic Blair Kamin, as administered by the not-for-profit Journalism Funding Partners. The Tribune maintains editorial control over assignments and content.<\/p>\n
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here<\/a> or email letters@chicagotribune.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bruce Goff\u2019s work is profoundly weird. His wildly outrageous 1947-48 Myron Bachman House in Uptown wraps masonry and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":508512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[2513,119154,194077,960,5386,1818],"class_list":{"0":"post-508511","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-architecture","9":"tag-art-institute-of-chicago","10":"tag-bruce-goff","11":"tag-chicago","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-illinois"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115876524642199494","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}