Russel Wright: At Home with Nature

“Russel Wright: The Nature of Design” explores the industrial designer’s relationship with the natural world. The exhibition, which originated at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz, documents Wright’s most personal project: the building of Manitoga, his weekend estate in Garrison, New York.

Curators Donald Albrecht and Dianne Pierce sat down with American Craft to discuss Wright’s goal of bringing to American culture “an intimacy with nature,” how he achieved this at Manitoga, and how it resonated in his work.

In 1942 Wright purchased land in Garrison, but it wasn’t until the late 1950s that he started to build Manitoga. Why did it take him so long?
Dianne Pierce: Wright wanted to find a place where he could successfully marry architecture and landscape, so he made a point of getting the land first and understanding and studying each inch of the site. He looked at many, many different sites before choosing this one. He spent many moonlit nights sitting and looking at the way the light fell on the site. It was always the land before [the] architecture for him.

Donald Albrecht: The failure of the American-Way project – Wright’s attempt in the late 1930s to partner with craftspeople, manufacturers, and retailers to offer home goods, craft, and mass-produced items to the masses – spurred Wright and his wife, Mary, to find a retreat from New York City.

They would go on the weekends, and he would study different views. Along the way, Wright hired an architect named David Leavitt, who had done some projects in New York in the Japanese style, an aesthetic Wright liked.

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