Wharton, Margaret

American, b.1943

BiographyMargaret Wharton’s work focused on the manipulation of found objects, most notably, deconstructed chairs. She dismantled and reassembled her materials into hybridized, almost anthropomorphic sculptures, to create whimsical, surreal visions of the otherwise mundane. Her physical process of fragmentation mirrors the intuitive process of artistic creation that requires discordant ideas to be synthesized and transformed into something harmonious. “My work describes that nature of what I know about humanness,” she said, quoted by Riverside Arts Center. “It incorporates both deconstruction and construction.” The two images in the Museum of Contemporary Photography permanent collection feature her signature chairs, before, during, and after deconstruction.

Margaret Wharton received a BA in advertising from University of Maryland in College Park. Her first foray into art was in 1967, when she took a welding class at Moravian College. She returned to school after moving to Chicago and becoming involved in the women’s movement, and received her MFA in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1975). During graduate school, she helped found Artemisia Cooperative Gallery (1972-2003) which was Chicago’s first all-female art gallery. Wharton was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Grant in 1979, 1988, and 1993. She has had solo exhibitions with the Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Her work is in the permanent collections of Art Institute of Chicago; Dallas Museum; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; and various others.