Smithsonian Show Features Funky Furniture - Thu Apr 1, 4:31 PM ET AP By CARL HARTMAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - This furniture is more funky than functional. A show opening Friday at the Renwick Gallery, "Right at Home: American Studio Furniture," features 58 thought-provoking pieces, including a desk with little space to write, bottomless drawers and a rickety chair.

This being Washington, the exhibit opens with the "Bureau of Bureaucracy" — an 8-foot sculpture in mahogany and other hardwoods that is a cross between a desk and a chest of drawers with secret compartments.

The piece, a six-year project by Kurt Schmahrmann, of Cambridge, Mass., is meant to be satirical, not practical. The writing space is impossibly small, as if the bureaucrat had nothing worth writing. The pigeonholes are skewed, and the drawers — some are bottomless — seem big enough to hold only a single document.

--Might wander down there with my girl...