A sturdy exhibition of photographs and objects born of Frank Lloyd Wright’s sprawling practice has opened at the Richard H. Driehaus Museum. Nicknamed Chicago’s “Marble Palace,” the elegant institution was built in 1883 as a residence. For this exhibition, five cozy rooms (originally bedrooms) serve as studies of what guest curator David Hanks calls “seven of Wright’s most important photographers” arranged in roughly chronological order. Unframed black-and-white photographic reproductions hang from wires, surrounded by ephemera from private collections and some of the storied architect’s own furniture and designed objects dating from the 1890s through 1959 (the year of Wright’s death).
Collection of Columbia University
Courtesy Frank Lloyd Wright Trust
Adept at self-branding and hustling, Wright was conscious of how the newish medium of photography could be used to his advantage in publications like LIFE magazine and Architectural Forum. (Wright had both artistic and editorial oversight in these collaborations.) The opening room features such 20th-century marketing materials as Wright’s proto-promotional selfies. His obsession with rectilinear aesthetics shows up even in the composition of these self-portraits and family photos. Furniture, too, worked in service of activating his vision; his famous high-backed dining chairs of 1895 created a “room within a room.” The inclusion of these and other decorative arts alongside images of the interiors for which they were intended illustrate Wright’s integrated design framework—a concept coined as “design unity.” The exhibition also traces Wright’s lifelong fascination with Japanese culture and offers new insight into his textile block houses.
Credit: Robert Chase Heishman
Hanks is just dishy enough in this staging of the singular architect’s achievements, acknowledging that Wright’s life was, at times, plagued by misfortune. Anecdotes reference Wright’s drama-filled relationship with his mentor and on-and-off employer, the “father of modernism,” Louis Sullivan. One of Wright’s masterpieces, Taliesin (the Wisconsin version), was twice consumed by flames (in 1914 and again in 1925) and rebuilt. The 1914 fire, an arson committed by a disgruntled employee, occurred in tandem with a grisly mass homicide whose victims included Wright’s lover and her children. I visited the show on Halloween, so perhaps the tour guide’s spooky emphasis on “ax murder” was seasonal flair.
Hanks has assembled a robustly comprehensive show that explores Wright’s rigorously disciplined and holistic approach to design alongside relational maps and timelines that detail the sometimes fraught friendships between Wright and his contemporaries; the messiness of his personal life contrasts with his obsession with neatness, wholeness, and geometry. You’ll want to budget several hours to amble through the dense but not crowded exhibition and didactics, filled with equal parts history and lore.
“Photographing Frank Lloyd Wright”
Through 1/5/25: Wed 11 AM-7 PM, Thu-Sun 11 AM-5 PM, The Richard H. Driehaus Museum, 50 E. Erie, driehausmuseum.org/exhibitions, admission $20 adults, $15 seniors, $10 students with ID, free for members, active military, children under 12, and on Wed from 5-7 PM
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