Art Museum

Welcome to the largest retrospective exhibit this art museum has ever devoted to an architect. The architect chosen for this honor is Frank Lloyd Wright, probably the greatest United States architect of the twentieth century. Wright has the reputation of being arrogant and insensitive to his clients' needs, but his work is based on a set of principles rather than a style. Because of his belief in unity of design and the elimination of unnecessary detail, he resisted his clients' wishes to introduce what he called foreign objects to his carefully designed interiors. Frank Lloyd Wright always tried to achieve harmony of building and setting. The first drawing in the exhibit, of one of his "Prairie" houses, illustrates this integration of the house with the landscape of the American Midwest. You can see how he stresses the horizontal line with spreading roofs and strips of windows. Outside porches stretch into the gardens, making one harmonious whole. Because of this goal of harmony, you won't see skyscrapers among his designs. Wright was criticized for his impractical houses with leaky flat roofs, but his houses also had great virtues. The design of the Prairie houses, for example, made them warm in winter and cool in summer. The drawings and photos in this exhibit will show the enormity of Frank Lloyd Wright's contribution to modern architecture.