A Frank Lloyd Wright Retrospective Will Open at MoMA Next Year

Next year, the Museum of Modern Art will play host to a major retrospective on Frank Lloyd Wright, perhaps America’s most famous architect, just in time for what would have been his 150th birthday. The New York City museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive, announced yesterday, will cover 450 of Wright’s works created between the 1890s and the 1950s. 

Though the modernist architect is known for his Midwestern roots, in 2012, MoMA and Columbia University became the stewards of the Frank Lloyd Wright Archive and, with it, Wright’s marvelously detailed personal stash of architectural drawings and models, photographs, manuscripts, and correspondences.

Liberty Magazine Cover. 1926. Color pencil on paper. 24 1/2 x 28 1/4″ (62.2 x 71.8 cm). The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York).

The MoMA retrospective will include both his iconic Prairie-style masterpieces, like Fallingwater, his unbuilt works, and lesser known projects like a model farm from the archive, rarely seen by the public. In addition to his architecture, the museum will display furniture, textiles, and paintings. It will also cover Wright’s impressive flair for self-promotion—under oath in a courtroom, he once called himself the "world's greatest architect." At the end of MoMA's retrospective, you can decide if he was right. 

Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive will run from June 12 to October 1, 2017.

[h/t Architectural Digest]