‘Frank Lloyd Wright’s Southwestern Pennsylvania’: two exhibitions bring new life to historic designs

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Southwestern Pennsylvania.

‘Frank Lloyd Wright’s Southwestern Pennsylvania: The Fallingwater Projects’, currently on display at Speyer Gallery at Fallingwater, located approximately 70 miles southeast of Pittsburgh in Mill Run, Pennsylvania, features 13 realised and unrealised projects that Wright designed for the Unesco World Heritage site from the 1930s through the 1950s. The exhibition was inspired by Wright’s two-dimensional drawings created in collaboration with Edgar Kaufmann Sr for projects intended for the Fallingwater site, as well as downtown Pittsburgh, which were displayed at the 1999 Carnegie Museum of Art exhibition ‘Merchant Prince and Master Builder’.

Animation still of project for Point View Residences for the Edgar J Kaufmann Charitable Trust, digital illustration, 2023 (Image credit: Skyline Ink Animators + Illustrators. This image was prepared with material kindly made available by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Courtesy of Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. All rights reserved.)

‘The impetus for this project was [a booklet] we found called Pittsburgh in Progress, to accompany an exhibition that was held in Kauffman's department store. The “Pittsburgh in Progress” exhibition was set up in 1946 to commemorate 75 years of the department store's history … looking forward 75 years, which would have been 2021. We wanted to also consider the changes or [consider] what this city thought it would look like at 75 years versus the reality of what it actually is in the 2020s,’ said Scott Perkins, senior director of Preservation and Collections for Speyer Gallery. 

‘Frank Lloyd Wright’s Southwestern Pennsylvania’, exhibition view (Image credit: Courtesy of The Westmoreland Museum of American Art.)

Brian Eyerman, an architect and artist with Skyline Ink Animators + Illustrators, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, employed 21st-century technology to create multimedia renderings of existing structures –Fallingwater, the Fallingwater Guest House, Kentuck Knob, and an office for Kaufman – along with others that were never constructed, as an examination of how the surrounding rural landscape might have been realised.

‘Frank Lloyd Wright’s Southwestern Pennsylvania’ at The Westmoreland Museum of American Art

‘Frank Lloyd Wright’s Southwestern Pennsylvania’, exhibition view (Image credit: Courtesy of The Westmoreland Museum of American Art.)

The Fallingwater exhibition is presented alongside a complementary show, ‘Frank Lloyd Wright’s Southwestern Pennsylvania’, at The Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, which employs three-dimensional renderings of five unrealised Wright projects for Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Skyline Ink Animators + Illustrators was also tasked with executing renderings for the Westmoreland Museum exhibition, including the Point (1947), a self-service garage for Kaufmann’s Department Store (1949), the Point View Residences designed for the Edgar J Kaufmann Charitable Trust (1952), the Rhododendron Chapel (1952; seen in the animation below), and a gate lodge for the Fallingwater grounds (1941).

‘People who know about Frank Lloyd Wright [are] going to be super familiar with some of the projects. They’re going to know about the model for Broadacre City, or they're going to know about Fallingwater, but they're going to see these objects in a completely new light where you see them activated through the mind of Frank Lloyd Wright,’ said Westmoreland Museum chief curator Jeremiah William McCarthy.

‘For people who have very little familiarity with Frank Lloyd Wright, this is a great introduction to his work because it helps you understand his practice in a holistic sense,’ he added.

‘Frank Lloyd Wright’s Southwestern Pennsylvania’, exhibition view (Image credit: Courtesy of The Westmoreland Museum of American Art.)

‘Frank Lloyd Wright’s Southwestern Pennsylvania: The Fallingwater Projects’ runs through the end of December 2023,  fallingwater.org

‘Frank Lloyd Wright’s Southwestern Pennsylvania’ runs through 14 January 14, 2024, thewestmoreland.org

‘Toshiko Mori & Frank Lloyd Wright: Dialogue in Details’, a further complementary exhibition, is on view in the Westmoreland Museum’s Paneled Rooms, and runs through 14 January 2024

Sketch for Civic Center at Point Park. Frank Lloyd Wright, architect, bird’s-eye view from Mount Washington, project, Civic Center at Point Park for the Allegheny Conference, 1947 (Image credit: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York))

Sketch of Rhododendron Chapel. Frank Lloyd Wright, architect; John H. Howe, delineator, perspective view of rear, project, Rhododendron Chapel for Mr E J Kaufmann, 08 June 1952 (Image credit: John H. Howe Collection, State Historical Society of Wisconsin)