Arts · June 30, 2026
Furlong Gallery Summer Show Puts the Manual Training School’s Shop Work on the Wall
“Made at Porter, 1893–1937” shows 140 objects made by students at the university’s predecessor, paired with work by current students.
The Furlong Gallery in the Applied Arts Building has opened its summer exhibition, Made at Porter, 1893–1937, a show of 140 objects made by students of the Porter Manual Training School and its successor, the Wesconsin Polytechnic Institute at Porter. It runs through August 22 and is free.
Most of the objects come from the university’s own collections, where many sat in labeled boxes in the basement of Halvorsen Library for decades. Others were lent by about 30 Porter Falls families who answered a call last fall for “anything Grandpa made in shop class.”
Highlights
- A complete set of 1902 joinery exercises — 24 wooden joints, each graded in pencil, three marked “do over”
- Forged iron hooks, hinges and a fireplace set made in the original Founders Hall smithy
- Mechanical drawing plates from 1911 to 1936, showing how drafting standards changed in a single classroom
- Sewing samplers and a 1924 tailored wool coat from the domestic arts program
- A 1931 wooden pattern for a lathe pulley, alongside the cast-iron pulley poured from it
Each historical piece is paired with a work by a current Porter student in the same discipline — a 1902 dovetail beside a CNC-cut furniture joint, a hand-drawn gear beside an apparel student’s laser-cut pattern pieces — selected by a six-student curatorial team.
“People expect these to be quaint. Then they look at the tolerances on a joint cut by a fourteen-year-old in 1902 with hand tools and they go quiet. The students curating this show certainly did.”
— Lise Brekke, director of the Furlong Gallery
Summer hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. A gallery talk on the manual training movement runs July 18 at 2 p.m. The show is part of the Furlong Gallery and University Collections program; the fall and spring lineup is on the 2026–27 exhibitions page, and the school’s early years are covered in the university’s history.
Contact: Office of University Communications, news@uwporterfalls.edu
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. The exhibition, its objects, lenders and curator are invented, and the Porter Manual Training School never graded anyone’s dovetails.