May 15, 2009
Guggenheim opens Frank Lloyd Wright blockbuster
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum today opened its summer blockbuster exhibition, “Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward,” celebrating the career of the architect who designed its iconic Upper East Side building.
The exhibition features more than 200 original Wright sketches, including some never publicly displayed, as well a models of projects never built or since demolished.
In telling the story of the architect’s career, the goal is to lead the way “into the art of possible,” Phil Allsopp, the president of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation said Thursday during a media preview of the exhibition.
With a curatorial team including ex-Guggenheim director Thomas Krens, and Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, the director of the Wright archives, the exhibition includes the obvious drawings of the Fifth Avenue museum, a well as the unexpected — and unrealized — St. Mark’s-in-the-Bouwerie Towers, intended for the Lower East Side.
Wright’s now classic, though sometimes-maligned circular ramps for the first time display his own life’s work, from Plan for Greater Baghdad (1957) to the Gordon Strong Automobile Objective and Planetarium for Sugarloaf, Maryland, (1924-25.) Descriptions are straight-forward, and white space is well in use, with the drama reserved for the architecture.
The New York Times’ architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff bluntly sums up the show this way:The show offers no new insight into his life’s work. Nor is there any real sense of what makes him so controversial. It’s a chaste show, as if the Guggenheim, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, was determined to make Wright fit for civilized company. The advantage of this low-key approach is that it puts the emphasis back where it belongs: on the work.
The exhibition will be in view through August 23, but the Wright celebrations will continue through the year, with the museum opening it’s doors for free all day on October 21, marking 50 years to the day since the Guggenheim opened.
Private curatorial tours will be offered, including a May 18 event with Eric Lloyd Wright and Margo Stipe, and a May 19 walk-through with David van der Leer, the museum’s assistant curator of Architecture and Design. The museum will host a panel June 10 on “The Architecture of Writing: Wright, Women, and Narrative” with Carol Gilligan, Beverly Willis, and Gwendolyn Wright, moderated by Sarah Goldhagen of The New Republic.
 Touch tours of the building to sight-impaired visitors on June 8 and July 13.
The museum has also published a book for the exhibition, also titled “Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward.”
The start of the Wright exhibition marks the change in the Guggenheim’s pay-what-you-wish hours. The discount was in place on Friday evenings, but now it’s Saturdays from :45 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. On Fridays, the museum now closes at 5:45 p.m.
However, the museum will host a Friday night live music series with bands such as The Walkmen and Grizzly Bear. The series — It Came From Brooklyn — will feature 10 bands over five Friday evenings starting in mid-August. Each event will start with a short reading by a Brooklyn-based writer or actor.
In April, the Guggenheim opened Cafe 3, an espresso and snack bar adjacent to the permanent Kandinsky Gallery on level three, but later this year it will open a high-end reservations-only restaurant of American cuisine next to the museum’s rotunda.
Other reviews of “Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward:”
The Guggenheim Turns 50 - Howard Kissel at the Daily News
Heavy Editing - Metropolis
Bonus: Panorama of the Guggenheim’s rotunda (NY Times)
All pictures by Amy Langfield/NewYorkology, except top image provided by the Guggenheim,
Frank Lloyd Wright
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
1943–59
Ink and pencil on tracing paper
20 × 24 inches
The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
FLLW FDN # 4305.745
© 2009 The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, Arizona
May 15, 2009 2:23 PM in Architecture, Cheap Stuff, History, Kids, Museums, Sightsology, Tours, Upper East Side
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