About Frank Wright
Frank Wright (1932 – 2020) was a man of unbound curiosity, intense drive, droll wit, and gregarious nature. He enjoyed a long, prolific career as a painter, printmaker, and educator, delighting in everyday moments, bringing history to life, and capturing light and atmospheric beauty on canvas. He loved people with family at the core. Profoundly generous, he built lasting friendships with artists, students, colleagues, and people he met in daily life.
Wright, a sixth-generation Washingtonian, made significant contributions to our understanding of DC’s past. The artist-historian researched and then transformed forgotten DC past into atmospheric present from Civil War Washington to FDR’s 1940 inaugural parade. His work is in many private and public collections, including commissions for NASA and the US House of Representatives. He exhibited widely, with solo exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery of Art (1981), Kennedy Galleries, NYC, and the Cosmos Club (2019).
Wright frequented his favorite locales with ritual-like regularity — Sundays at Montrose Park (and later Fairhaven on the Chesapeake Bay), New York City before Christmas, Paris on spring break, and Maine in summer. For Wright, these beloved rhythms fostered creative renewal with fresh, observant eyes on the familiar. The paintings naturally followed. He was a bona fide humanist. He experienced things — art, books, photographs — as dynamic portals into past lives, often with mysteries to solve. Like his own artworks, each object he collected was a human connection. A purchase was just the beginning of a journey that might result in a new painting or a new friend.
Wright’s impact as an educator is among his greatest legacies. He loved teaching and was an inspiring mentor, passionate about expanding his students’ horizons. With an innately generous spirit, he gave his students the same tremendous support that he had received from educators. He retired at age 82 as Professor Emeritus of Drawing and Graphic Arts from GWU. All told, Wright educated and inspired literally thousands of students over the span of 55 years.