ArtVisualizer Press Media | Archie Visual Design & Art Review

50th anniversary of the completion of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, a landmark structure often condemned by artists but extolled by architects. This marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Wright, who had unfortunately missed the opening on October 21, 1959.

To commemorate these events, the Guggenheim Foundation (passed away six months prior at the age of 91) joined with the Arizona-based Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation to bring Wright’s own artistic production to public attention in the recently restored building on Fifth Avenue. The exhibition features over 200 original drawings and a number of historic models, supplemented by newly commissioned models and digital animations. This exhibition opens Friday and runs through August.

This is the first time the Guggenheim has mounted a comprehensive exhibition of Wright’s work in this building. It is only fitting that the institution should celebrate the golden anniversary of its pioneering building with a show devoted to Wright: He is inarguably the United States’ best-known architect, and the Guggenheim is among his best-known projects. The Guggenheim’s installations have risen or succumbed to the complexity of the party. When the Guggenheim opened, a number of artists were already in a lather that paintings would be mounted on the sloping back walls of the narrow vertiginous ramp. James Johnson Sweeney, the museum director who battled with Wright over his scheme, was blasted for his solution in which he mounted the paintings on projecting rods: The works, according to a contemporaneous review in ARTnews, looked like “marshmallows stuck to the ends of twigs.”

Now we have Wright’s own “contraband” with an exhibition of fragile and difficult-to-see-drawings—some of which have never been viewed by the public. The exhibition’s curatorial team had to come up with its own solution to address the ramp’s notorious display challenge.

The exhibition continues into the annex designed in 1992 by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates, where installations have breathing space. A three-dimensional exploded model of the Herbert Jacobs House Number 1 (1936-37) created by Situ Studio. Smaller show in the museum’s Sackler Center for Arts Education features architecture designed by students at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture in Arizona and Wisconsin, and was curated by the indefatigable van der Leer, with Joseph consulting on the installation.