Furniture by Architects / Sculpture by Margaret Saliske

‘T’ Space is pleased to present Furniture by Architects / Sculpture by Margaret Saliske, curated by Mark McDonald, co-founder of Fifty/50 and, for over four decades, a leading authority on twentieth-century design. The exhibition brings architect-designed furniture, fixtures, and objects into dialogue with an installation of small wall sculpture by Margaret Saliske. Set within the Steven Myron Holl Foundation Archive, the works can be read as microcosms of architectural ideation, testing relationships between form, structure, material, and space. Reflecting the interdisciplinary ethos of ‘T’ Space, the exhibition explores the intersections of sculpture, furniture, architectural models, and exhibition space, inviting visitors to consider how objects shape our understanding of scale, context, function, materiality, and spatial experience.

As Mark McDonald notes, “In the context of ‘T’ Space, and alongside architecture and furniture, [Saliske’s] sculptures can be read as models for imagined or speculative spaces. There is a push and pull in that ambiguity. The reverse can also happen: architectural models and furniture begin to read as sculpture.”

This dialogue emerged naturally. Saliske elaborates: “They could be architecture, or machine parts, or a section lifted from nature. The viewer brings their own experiences to an abstract form to make sense of it. When I make sculpture, all forms in my environment are available consciously or unconsciously. The trick for me is to keep this information suspended so that everything is in play at once.”

The exhibition includes works by Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Aalto, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Rudolph Schindler, Robert Mallet-Stevens, Frank Gehry, Steven Holl, Jean Nouvel, Philip Johnson, Serge Chermayeff, Henry P. Glass, and Richard Meier.

An interview by Kelly Pope with Mark McDonald and Margaret Saliske further explores these intersections of sculpture, furniture, architecture, and space. Read the full interview here.

Opening Sunday, June 14, 11 – 5  

On view through August 23,  2026

Archive Gallery Open Hours: Sundays 11 – 5  

60 Round Lake Road, Rhinebeck, NY 12572

Mark McDonald is a leading authority on twentieth-century design. For over four decades, he has advised leading collectors and museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Vitra Design Museum. Frequently cited as an expert in national publications, he has also contributed to books on design from the 1930s through the 1970s.

In 1982, McDonald co-founded Fifty/50 in New York City with Ralph Cutler and Mark Isaacson, pioneering the research, exhibition, marketing, and sale of what became known as Mid-Century Modern design. He later opened Gansevoort Gallery and, after relocating to the Hudson Valley in 2003, continued dealing in exceptional examples of mid-century design. Today he works from Hudson L-House, designed by Steven Holl Architects, where he continues to advise collectors and museums while specializing in rare mid-century design and studio jewelry.

Margaret Saliske lived and worked in New York City until moving to the Hudson Valley in 1989. She has a B.A. degree from Bennington College and attended the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in studio art. In 2018 she received an Apexart fellowship to Seoul South Korea and in 2019 was a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome.

She exhibited her work at Artists Space and 55 Mercer Street Gallery in New York City before moving upstate where she has shown her work at numerous area galleries. She exhibited with Pamela Salisbury in Hudson NY and Lockwood Gallery in Kingston NY. In 2023, she was represented at Art Taipei by Carrie Chen Gallery. She was recently included in “Let It Shine” an exhibition of New York artists in Mark McDonald’s L House designed by Steven Holl. Saliske lives and works in Hudson, New York.