MoMA Announces Major Frank Lloyd Wright Retrospective in 2017 to Mark His 150th Birthday

Today is the 149th anniversary of prolific architect Frank Lloyd Wright‘s birth, and with next year being the big 150, the Museum of Modern Art has announced a major exhibition in 2017 that will feature roughly 450 works that he created from the 1890s through the 1950s. “Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive” will include architectural drawings, models, building fragments, films, television broadcasts, print media furniture, tableware, textiles, paintings, photographs, and scrapbooks, some of which have rarely or never been exhibited.

A model of Frank Lloyd Wright’s unbuilt St. Mark’s-in-the-Bouwerie here in New York, which will be on display. Courtesy of The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York)

The retrospective was born out of the 2012 transfer of the Frank Lloyd Wright archive to MoMA and Columbia’s Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library. Since Wright was such a multifaceted creator, the exhibit is structured as an anthology and divided into 12 sections, including: imagery and form from Native American design; preoccupation with ornament; DIY building systems; the relationships between nature, landscape, and architecture; and the quest for an original American architecture of the future. Some of his finest works, such as the Robie House, Fallingwater, and Johnson Wax Administration Building, will be featured.

“Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive” will run from June 12 to October 1, 2017. More information can be found here.

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