Photographing Frank Lloyd Wright: Exhibition Partnership

Photographing Frank Lloyd Wright
Driehaus Museum
October 24, 2024 – January 5, 2025

Frank Lloyd Wright instinctively understood the power and potential of photography, relying on it to share his aesthetic vision and shape his public image. Although his architecture has been the subject of many exhibitions, none have surveyed Wright’s work through the eyes of the leading photographers with whom he collaborated. Furthermore, no exhibition has addressed the subject of Wright, himself, as a photographer.

Photographing Frank Lloyd Wright begins with the topic of Wright as a talented amateur photographer experimenting with new technology. Wright purchased a camera in the late nineteenth century, using it to capture landscapes and nature, family and friends, and the traditional architecture that inspired him during a 1905 trip to Japan. Early in his career, Wright also created self-portraits, carefully composed to express a confident, successful persona. New discoveries in the exhibition include a remarkable collection of Wright’s images depicting daily life and activities at the Hillside Home School in Wisconsin, which was owned by his aunts.

The exhibition is organized thematically by the leading photographers who documented Wright’s career and includes Wright’s own photography. These compelling images, published in magazines and books, helped him attain widespread visibility and contributed to his fame. Architectural photographers in the exhibition include Henry Fuermann & Sons, Julius Shulman, Hedrich-Blessing, Ezra Stoller and Pedro Guerrero.

Also included are Torkel Korling and Edmund Teske, whose lesser-known images of Wright’s work will be a new discovery for many visitors. In addition to the architectural photographs, the exhibition presents Wright’s furniture and decorative arts alongside images of the interiors for which he designed them, demonstrating his concept of design unity.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Trust, Chicago, is a collaborating partner in Photographing Frank Lloyd Wright. For the duration of the exhibition, the Driehaus Museum and the Trust and will offer reciprocal member benefits that include admission to the Driehaus Museum, the Robie House Museum, and Wright’s Home and Studio Museum. The Driehaus Museum and the Trust are also collaborating on several public programs and educational series that includes exclusive half-day tours of the exhibition and Wright sites, an educators’ evening, and other engaging dialogues.

About the Driehaus Museum

The Driehaus Museum engages and inspires the global community through exploration and ongoing conversations in art, architecture, and design of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its permanent collection and temporary exhibitions are presented in an immersive experience within the restored Nickerson Mansion, completed in 1883, at the height of the Gilded Age, and the Murphy Auditorium, built in 1926. The Museum’s collection reflects and is inspired by the collecting interests, vision, and focus of its founder, the late Richard H. Driehaus.

About the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust, Chicago

The Frank Lloyd Wright Trust, Chicago, was founded in 1974 as an independent not-for-profit organization for public access and preservation of Wright’s original sites. Today the Trust operates at four Wright sites in the Chicago area: The Frederick C. Robie House, Wright’s Home and Studio, Unity Temple, and The Rookery where Wright designed a multi-level atrium light court. The Trust offers public tours, professional development for educators, student internships, studio programs, parent-child classes, an international travel program, Wright library/archive/collections, and a variety of virtual programs on Wright’s modern design legacy.