Frank Lloyd Wright Collection
The existence of the magnificent Frank Lloyd Wright archives is the result of visionary actions and hard work by those who knew and loved Wright. During his lifetime, the architect had declined to donate portions of his work to various museums and institutions, preferring to keep together his life's work. Upon Wright's death in 1959, Mrs. Wright gathered the archive of his work at Taliesin West, thereby preserving and keeping intact the visual and textual legacy of one of history's great geniuses. It was an unprecedented action, since architectural archives of such size and scope for a single architect did not exist at that time. Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, first as Taliesin apprentice then as Director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives, curated and organized the archives since its inception, thereby earning the appreciation of Frank Lloyd Wright lovers everywhere. The Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library would like to acknowledge the dedication of the Taliesin staff to preserving Wright’s legacy.
Image credit: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York)
Selected materials from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives are available for research and consultation by appointment only. Wright's project drawings among other materials such as correspondence, photography, manuscripts continue to be made available as they are processed.
If you are traveling to consult the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives, please confirm the date and time of your appointment with Drawings and Archives staff before making travel arrangements.
Please address all inquiries and requests for an appointment to wrightarchives-info@columbia.edu
Avery Library’s Department of Drawings & Archives holds other important collections of Frank Lloyd Wright material including approximately 1,000 architectural drawings (c. 1880-1959) and related archival documents. Major projects represented in our existing Wright collection include: Dana House, Fallingwater, Guggenheim Museum, and Wright's own home and studio in Oak Park, Ill.
Please direct inquiries about these materials to:
avery-drawings@library.columbia.edu
Avery Library maintains a comprehensive collection of published works on Frank Lloyd Wright. Please consult CLIO, our online catalog for holdings.
Avery Classics, our rare books collection, includes first edition and other rare volumes of Frank Lloyd Wrights’ published works.
Please direct inquiries about these materials to:
avery-classics@library.columbia.edu
Guggenheim Blogs tells the Guggenheim's evolving story, and offers insights on visual culture, urbanism, and the global art world, along with regular discoveries from the archives. They have numerous entries on the Guggenheim building and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive
Museum of Modern Art
June 12-October 1, 2017
Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library and MoMA are pleased to announce the opening of a co-presented exhibition, Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive, June 12 – October 1, 2017 at the Museum of Modern Art.
Drawing on the expansive Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archive, jointly acquired by Avery and MoMA in 2012, the exhibition comprises approximately 450 works made from the 1890s through the 1950s, including architectural drawings, models, building fragments, films, television broadcasts, print media, furniture, tableware, textiles, paintings, photographs, and scrapbooks, along with a number of works that have rarely or never been publicly exhibited.
Marking the 150th anniversary of the American architect’s birth on June 8, 1867, Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive, critically engages his multifaceted practice.
Image credit: Frank Lloyd Wright. St. Mark’s-in-the-Bouwerie Towers, New York Project 1927-1931. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York)
Frank Lloyd Wright and the City: Density vs. Dispersal
Museum of Modern Art
February 1-June 1, 2014
Frank Lloyd Wright and the City: Density vs. Dispersal celebrates the recent joint acquisition of Frank Lloyd Wright’s extensive archive by MoMA and Columbia University’s Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library. Through an initial selection of drawings, films, and large-scale architectural models, the exhibition examines the tension in Wright’s thinking about the growing American city in the 1920s and 1930s, when he worked simultaneously on radical new forms for the skyscraper and on a comprehensive plan for the urbanization of the American landscape titled “Broadacre City.”
Image credit: Frederick C. Robie residence, 1909. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York)
Pioneering Agreement with Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
Columbia University, The Museum of Modern Art, and The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation have announced that the vast archives of Frank Lloyd Wright (American, 1867-1959) have been jointly acquired by the University and the Museum and will become part of their permanent collections. Wright is considered by many to be one of the 20th century’s most influential architects, a figure whose iconic work helped define modernism. The American Institute of Architects, in a recent national survey, recognized him as “the greatest American architect of all time.”
Avery Library will be the repository for all paper-based archival contents, including architectural drawings, the extensive personal and professional correspondence as well as photographs including both personal and architectural photography of Wright’s works, interview tapes, transcripts and films. The Museum of Modern Art will house all three-dimensional works, including architectural models, architectural elements and design prototypes in the archives. The Archives add to Avery and MoMA existing collections of materials by Frank Lloyd Wright, and this joint acquisition signals a ground-breaking collaboration between the two institutions to insure long term access and preservation of the materials, at the same time providing opportunities to celebrate the collections through public programs and exhibitions, curricular integration, research interrogation and publications.