Rethinking Frank Lloyd Wright: Thoughts from a trip through the Rustbelt

2017-09-07T12:00:00-04:00

While in New York this July I visited MoMA’s retrospective of Frank Lloyd Wright, ‘Unpacking the Archive’, an extensive collection of Wright’s production to celebrate his 150 year anniversary. Despite his revered position as America’s protégé architect and seminal figure—and having studied his work in the past—a number of surprising and unexpected thoughts from the show stuck with me during my subsequent month-long journey through the American Midwest. Both a pioneer of radical experimentation and a deep-rooted member of the status quo, Wright’s projects draw from many cultural histories and are, at times, divisive. But is it time the architecture press retires from reinventing Frank Lloyd Wright, the tireless self-publicist, and instead focuses the spotlight elsewhere? I discuss my thoughts with architect, cultural historian and Wright scholar Mabel O. Wilson, who currently teaches architectural history and theory at Columbia GSAAP.

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Rethinking Frank Lloyd Wright: Thoughts from a trip through the Rustbelt