Frederick Kiesler's Multi-Use Chairs at MoMA

I was pleasantly surprised that the Museum of Modern Art was open on July 4th, when it was a million degrees in my apartment and most other activities were closed for the holiday. I figured the museum would at least have good air conditioning. Evidently I was not the only one with this idea. The place was fairly crowded, with art lovers and natives and World Cup tourists alike. One of the high points of the visit was seeing furniture made by Frederick Kiesler (18901965) an architect who immigrated to the US from the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the late 1920s. Although Kiesler didn't have much of an impact commercially in furniture design, he did design some important buildings and some landmark furniture. The Kiesler work shown here are the original Surrealist-inspired "Multi-Use Chairs" that Kiesler designed in 1942 for Peggy Guggenheim's "Art of This Century" gallery in New York. The chairs are made of linoleum clad oak. The original materials bill was $9 each. Depending on how you…