THE BRUCE GOFF ARCHIVE
Bruce Goff (1904-1982) was one of the most inventive and iconoclastic architects of the twentieth century. Born in Kansas, he spent most of his life practicing in Oklahoma, Chicago, and Texas. In addition to his pursuit of "design for the continuous present" through architecture, Goff was also an artist and in the 1930s, a composer of modern piano compositions. Apart from his own innate creativity, Goff found inspiration for his work from a variety of sources, including the architecture of Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Antoni Gaudí, Erich Mendelsohn, modern European fine arts and music, and the arts of Japan and Southeast Asia.
In a career that spanned more than six decades, Goff saw almost a hundred and fifty of his architectural designs—of a total oeuvre of more than five hundred—built in fifteen states. While the majority of his projects were private residences, commercial and civic buildings appeared throughout in both large and small-scale commissions. In each of these designs, Goff's sensitivity to client, site, space, and material set him apart from the mainstream.
Goff also profoundly influenced a younger generation of architects through his teaching at the University of Oklahoma, apprenticeships, and lectures and is regarded as one of the masters of organic architecture in the United States. In 1995, The Art Institute of Chicago mounted a major retrospective exhibition of his work, with an accompanying catalog, The Architecture of Bruce Goff, 1904-1982: Design for the Continuous Present.
In 1990, The Art Institute of Chicago received Goff's comprehensive archive through the Shin'enKan Foundation, Inc. and Goff's executor, Joe Price. Additional donations have been received from various sources. Because of the vast scope of the archive, its contents were subsequently divided according to material type between several departments at the Art Institute, as described below.
Ryerson & Burnham Archives
Bruce Goff archive. 132.5 linear feet.
Holdings consist of Goff's entire professional papers, along with many personal items: business and personal correspondence, project files, photographs and slides, published and unpublished lectures and articles, business and personal financial papers, personal collections of shells and rocks, player-piano rolls composed and cut by Goff, and audio and video recordings of interviews, lectures, and documentaries.
For further information about consulting the Ryerson & Burnham Archives' holdings of the Bruce Goff archive, please refer to its access information.
R&B Archives, Bruce A. Goff Archive, Finding Aid
Department of Architecture and Design
Bruce Goff collection. Approx. 8,000 drawings and 400 paintings.
Holdings consist of architectural and design drawings—including preliminary design sketches, presentation renderings, and working drawings—and painted compositions by Goff and various students and apprentices.
For further information about consulting the Department of Architecture's holdings of the Bruce Goff archive, please contact the department at (312) 443-3518. Available records of the catalogued portions of these holdings are provided here as PDF documents. You will need
Adobe's Acrobat Reader to view or print the PDF documents.
Finding Aid
Department of Asian Art
Bruce Goff collection. Approx. 850 prints.
Holdings consist of Goff's collection of Japanese woodblock prints.
For further information about consulting the Department of Asian Art's holdings of the Bruce Goff archive, please contact
the department directly at (312) 443-3834.
Department of African and Amerindian Art
Bruce Goff collection. 29 paintings.
The gouache paintings that comprise the Department of African and Amerindian Art's holdings of Bruce Goff's archive are from the
Santa Fe Indian School movement. Established in 1932 by educator Dorothy Dunn, the Studio was responsible for fostering new methods
of Indian education, developing a new Native American painting genre, and creating a market for this genre. Characteristics of this
new art style include subject matter that is utterly devoted to Native American cultural themes and a two-dimensional painting style,
usually without inclusion of a painted background that might give the work a temporal or spatial context. Goff's archive at the Art
Institute of Chicago includes such well-known Studio painters as Harrison Begay, Lawrence Outah and Kuperu (Theodore Suina).
For further information about consulting the Department of African and Amerindian Art's holdings of the Bruce Goff archive, please contact
the department at (312) 443-3657.
Department of Prints and Drawings
Bruce Goff collection. 1 drawing.
Holdings consist of an academic figure study by Gustav Klimt previously owned by Goff.
For further information about consulting this work, please refer to the Department of Prints and Drawings'
access information.
Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Male Nude with Left Foot on a Pedestal, 1879
Graphite and white heightening on brown wove paper
Gift of Shin'enKan, Inc., 2000.447
Send questions or comments regarding this information to
Ryerson & Burnham Archives: rbarchives@artic.edu
Ryerson & Burnham Libraries, (312) 443-7292
© 2002.The Art Institute of Chicago. 111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, 60603-6110. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
