The Show To End All Shows: Frank Lloyd Wright and The Museum of Modern Art, 1940
Edited by Peter Reed and William Kaizen
With an Essay by Kathryn Smith
8vo. pp. 240. black & white illustrations. wrs. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, [2004].
Studies in Modern Art 8. A series prepared by the Research and Scholarly Publications Program of The Museum of Modern Art, which was initiated with the support of a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
New.
ISBN-10: 0870700553 / ISBN-13: 9780870700552
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
In 1940, The Museum of Modern Art planned a major retrospective and catalogue of the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, collaborating with this great American architect on the design and content of the show and commissioning essays for the book from many of the best-known architectural figures of the day. The book was never published; the exhibition took place, but in a scrambled, half-realized form. The Show to End All Shows tells the story of the exhibition's production. It is dramatic tale, offering extraordinary insights into the professional practices of world-famous architect and the curatorial routines of the still-young Museum, and replete with deux ex machina interventions from the highest level of American society. The Show to End All Shows also contains the complete text of the planned exhibition catalogue, finally published sixty years after the fact - an important record of the thinking on Wright, by both critics and peers, in his own time.