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L I V I N G W I TH A N D I N A RT Highlighting the Kaufmann family’s collection
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n the world of architecture, Fallingwater is studied as one of the pinnacles of Frank Lloyd Wright’s career. While Wright is responsible for the house’s design and its signature black walnut furniture, the Kaufmanns amassed a remarkable collection of fine and decorative art. Representing a lifetime of collecting, these objects exhibit notions of flexibility, beauty, rusticity, and sophistication in their assemblage and arrangement. Each piece serves to tell a story, and each story a reflection of the object’s designer, maker and owner.
In April, Fallingwater released its first-ever publication focusing on the Kaufmann family’s collection, Fallingwater: Living With and In Art, published by Rizzoli. Edited by Fallingwater’s Director Justin Gunther and Senior Director of Preservation and Collections Scott Perkins, the six scholarly essays and beautiful photography reveal a deeper understanding of the Kaufmanns as influential modern tastemakers. Each essay contributor explores the collection through a thematic geographical approach, one that further reflects the Kaufmanns’ international ties and influence.
Fallingwater: Living With and In Art, published by Rizzoli is the first-ever book to focus on the collection.
Gunther invited Glenn Adamson, a curator, writer and historian, to write the foreword. Adamson previously served as the director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, head of research at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and curator of the Chipstone Foundation. An expert in design history, modern craft and contemporary art, Adamson is currently the artistic director for Design Doha, a biennial in Qatar, curator at large for the Vitra Design Museum, and editor of Material Intelligence. In his foreword, Adamson points out, “Modernism has a reputation for absent-mindedness. Not as in forgetting, though perhaps there was quite a bit of that too, but rather as in glorious emptiness. White walls, clear glass, hard steel. These, we are told, were the elements of the International Style, enclosing volumes that were open in plan, rigorously geometric, and above all, uncluttered.” However, he goes on to say, if you “have a look at period photography of modernist homes, whether by Walter Gropius, Charlotte Perriand, Eileen Gray, or Erno Goldfinger . . . you’ll see that they were richly populated. It was only under extremely artificial conditions that Continued on page 2