Frank Lloyd Wright: Architecture of the Interior

Frederick Robie House, Dining Area Looking Toward Living Area, Chicago, Illinois, 1916. Courtesy of The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York).

The District Architecture Center is pleased to host Frank Lloyd Wright: Architecture of the Interior, an exhibition exploring the design of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses, often considered his greatest architectural accomplishment. Through reproduction drawings, photographs, and photographic murals, the exhibition illustrates the myriad—both obvious and subtle—ways Wright created the visual character of interior space and objects within it, each an essential detail of the larger whole.

Drawings and photographs of interiors show the ingenious ways Wright maximized the feeling of open space while accommodating the various functions for daily living. Wright’s rejection of past styles led him to the contemporary visual language of abstraction and geometry. For Wright, this language had a deeper source as the structure and ornament of all forms in nature. Just as a living form is one entity in structure and ornament, so the house was to be a single whole in structure and expression. The works in this exhibition reveal how all elements in Wright’s design express the overarching abstract geometric order of the house.

About the Curator

Exhibition curator Virginia Terry Boyd received her PhD in Human Environment and Design after obtaining an MA in Art History. Dr. Boyd is currently Emerita Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Design Studies Department, where she was the department chair. She has been a guest scholar at the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archive in Scottsdale, Arizona, and frequently lectures and publishes journal articles on issues related to Frank Lloyd Wright and Twentieth Century American material culture. 

About International Arts & Artists

International Arts & Artists in Washington, DC is a non-profit arts service organization dedicated to increasing cross-cultural understanding and exposure to the arts internationally through exhibitions, programs and services to artists, art institutions and the public. For more information, visit www.artsandartists.org.                                

About The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation

The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation was established by Frank Lloyd Wright himself in 1940 to be a cultural and educational institution and the primary conservator of his work. It is dedicated to inspiring people with the living experience of Frank Lloyd Wright's ideas, philosophies, and body of work. The Foundation owns Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona and Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin. Both are National Historic Landmarks with robust tour operations, educational outreach, retail operations, and other activities. The Foundation: runs the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, with fully accredited undergraduate and graduate degree programs (a continuation of the apprenticeship program Wright established in 1932); stewards the vast Frank Lloyd Wright Archives; owns and manages the intellectual property for all of Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs, drawings, plans, art, and other creations from his prolific 70-year career; and engages in a variety of meaningful outreach programs and partnerships – such as this exhibition. For more information, visit www.franklloydwright.org.

This program is presented in association with Frank Lloyd Wright: Architecture of the Interior, organized by International Arts & Artists, Washington, DC, in cooperation with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, AZ, on view through September 6, 2019.

         

              

Curated by Virginia Terry Boyd


This exhibition was produced in ArchiCAD, courtesy of Graphisoft.

Generously supported in part by BluEdge.

Installation by Tim Anderson


This project has been funded in part by a grant from the Dorothea DeSchweinitz Fund for the District of Columbia of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.