Like a circus big top surrounded by curiosity-inducing sideshows, the Museum of Modern Art’s Frank Lloyd Wright retrospective has spawned a series of smaller Wright exhibitions and events, including:
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Wasmuth Folios: Representing the Ideal, on view through March 12 at the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, Buell Hall, Columbia University, Broadway at 116th St. Curated by Anthony Alofsin, the exhibition contrasts 25 drawings for a 1910-11 portfolio of Wright’s work with photographs of the actual buildings.
Frank Lloyd Wright: A Personal View, Photographs by Pedro E. Guerrero, today through April 1 at the Lobby Gallery, 31 W. 52nd St. In contrast to the grand sweep of the Modern show, this exhibition, organized by a team that included Guerrero, presents an intimate portrait of Wright.
A Temple of Spirit: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Designs for the Guggenheim Museum, March 4 through Sept. 7, at the Guggenheim, 5th Ave. at 88th St. This exhibition, curated by Matthew Drutt, will examine the concepts behind Wright’s coiling concrete masterpiece, with about 40 original drawings, construction photographs, excerpts of letters to Hilla Rebay (the museum’s first director), plus a video.
The Decorative Arts of Frank Lloyd Wright in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, March 1 through Sept. 4 at the museum, 5th Ave. at 82nd St. Curated by Catherine Hoover Voorsanger, the show explains Wright’s all-encompassing aesthetic vision with more than 75 works of furniture, ceramics, sculpture, architectural fragments and drawings.
Frank Lloyd Wright as Seen Through Television, April 6, the Museum of Television & Radio, 25 W. 52nd St. Hugh Downs and Mike Wallace, who interviewed Wright in the 1950s, join the Modern’s chief architectural curator, Terence Riley.
The only showing of the Modern’s exhibition is in New York. A spokeswoman for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., which lent the bulk of material for the exhibition, said a desire not to expose fragile drawings to light for extended periods of time, as well as funding concerns, prevented the show from traveling.
