Curated by Barry Bergdoll with Jennifer Gray
MoMA’s exhibition on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright’s birth also celebrates the institution’s 2012 joint acquisition, with Columbia University’s Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, of Wright’s vast archive. The museum’s tenth show of Wright’s designs, “Unpacking the Archive” will be its largest, comprising some 450 pieces in various media. While visitors will find many celebrated masterpieces—such as Fallingwater (1937), the Johnson Wax Administration Building (1939), and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1959)—rendered in glorious drawings and superbly restored models, lesser-known (and largely unbuilt) projects, critically framed within their historical contexts, will also be represented. Examples include a model farm, a school for African American children in Virginia, a country club, and a “mile-high skyscraper.” Bergdoll, Gray, and fourteen other scholars discuss select archival objects in the accompanying catalogue, addressing the care needed to preserve Wright’s legacy, questions of authorship, and the architect’s brilliant gift for self-promotion.
