Frank Lloyd Wright Archives Relocate to New York (ArchDaily)

Why the Art Institute Passed on Frank Lloyd Wright's Collection (Crain's)

This is truly unfortunate. Wright was from Wisconsin, he worked for Louis Sullivan and began his career in Chicago. The vast majority of Wright's works are located in the Midwest (including about 50 in the Chicago area). His philosophy and his architecture were always rooted in his relationship with the prairie landscape and transcendental culture. Wright largely despised MoMA (and the founder of its Architecture Department, Philip Johnson) for the central role it played in promoting the so-called "International Style" of architecture, which he considered to be a dumb, stripped down version of the spatial innovations that he pioneered.

The Art Institute of Chicago would have have been the obvious location for his consolidated collection. This is a huge missed opportunity. The fact that MoMA and the Avery Library will now hold his collected works has to be one of the great ironies in the history of architecture.