Current Exhibition
May 28, 2010 - September 19, 2010
Fellowship: 75 Years of Taliesin Box Projects
Price Tower Arts Center announces its upcoming exhibition, Fellowship: 75 Years of Taliesin Box Projects. The exhibition features designs of apprentices of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship, which later became known as the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. The exhibition opens on May 28th and continues through September 19th at the Price Tower Arts Center located at 510 Dewey Avenue in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
The box projects were an opportunity for apprentices to create hand-crafted, artistic expressions independent of the day-to-day work of architectural drafting and design. The boxes became tokens of appreciation that were given to Frank Lloyd Wright twice every year. The tradition carried over to his wife, Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, after Wright’s death in 1959. Today, students of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture present a modern day version of the project each year during juried reviews of their work.
The exhibition will include approximately 75 works on paper and 20 presentation boxes. The exhibition will feature the works of William Wesley Peters, John DeKoven Hill, Edgar Tafel, Kenneth Lockhart, Ling Po, and Allen Davidson as well as current fellows and apprentices, and include drawings, illustrated poems and prose, textiles, abstracted nature studies, paintings and photographs.
“The goal of the exhibition is to celebrate the creativity of those men and women who came to Taliesin, in a way that honors their commitment to Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision,” said Price Tower Arts Center Curator Scott W. Perkins. “This exhibition is new, and features objects rarely seen outside of the Taliesin Fellowship in Scottsdale, Arizona.”
The project came about as result of an invitation from Victor Sidy, Dean of Taliesin, who was interested in creating an exhibition that would highlight the achievements of the Taliesin School graduates by examining some of their earliest works. Price Tower Arts Center Curator Scott Perkins made four research visits to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives at Taliesin West of a two year period, viewing the boxes and artwork that had been archived by the staff of the William Wesley Peters Library.
“The amount of material was a bit overwhelming,” said Perkins. “But, it was all in excellent condition. Elizabeth Dawsari, Director of Libraries, and volunteer Mary Ann Langston had organized the box project material by year, which greatly aided in my understanding of the phases of the school. We will be able to highlight work produced from 1934-1959 during Frank Lloyd Wright’s life, 1959-1985 when his widow, Olgivanna, headed the foundation and from 1985 to the present as second and third generations of Taliesin Fellows led the program.”
Fans of Frank Lloyd Wright will find Fellowship: 75 Years of Taliesin Box Projects is an opportunity to view work by Taliesin apprentices never seen before.
“They may be curious to compare the apprentice work to the Master’s, and view the transitions in quality over time, especially following Frank Lloyd Wright’s and Olgivanna Lloyd Wright’s deaths,” said Perkins.
Community partners for the project include the Graham Foundation which awarded a grant to support the development of the exhibition. Taliesin, the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation provided considerable hands-on and research support.
