Frank Lloyd Wright’s Southwestern Pennsylvania
April 13, 2024–October 5, 2025
Frank Lloyd Wright, one of America’s most renowned architects, left a lasting impact on Southwestern Pennsylvania. Between the 1930s and 1950s, he completed major projects and proposed bold designs for clients such as Edgar Kaufmann. This exhibition celebrated his built works while exploring how his unbuilt designs could have transformed the region’s cities, suburbs, and rural areas.
Through drawings, photographs, archival materials, original Wright furniture, and media installations, visitors traced Wright’s evolving ideas from concept to construction. Five unrealized projects were brought to life to show their potential impact, culminating in an immersive tri-screen installation that transported visitors into Wright’s unbuilt world.
Two colors from Wright's Taliesin Color Palette were used, adapted from the inaugural exhibition with updated topic panels, labels, and vinyl texts to match. The overhead architecture was finished with the venue’s standard white paint.

Exhibition Plan

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Objective_
Arrange fifteen curated sections across four galleries, totaling 3,600 square feet of exhibition space. Update the exhibition checklist and curator’s script as necessary.
Approach_
Inspired by Wright’s fascination with geometry, we arranged the narrative around rotating pods with angled walls at the centers of three galleries, which served both as display surfaces and storage for the exhibition. At the entrance, visitors saw Wright—pictured in 1945—in his Taliesin drafting room, supported by his early 1930s-designed drafting table and stool. Existing cases were reused for simplicity. The fourth gallery concluded the exhibition with the animators’ tri-screen animation experience.
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Roles: Exhibition Coordination and Design
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Venue: National Building Museum
Co-organizers: The Westmoreland Museum of American Art and Fallingwater
Co-curators: Scott W. Perkins and Jeremiah William McCarthy
Coordinating director: Caitlin Bristol
Animators: Skyline Ink Animators + Illustrators
Graphic designer: Matt Blum
Photos © Scott Clowney
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