Member Newsletter: Summer 2022

Martin Filler is a prolific architecture critic, historian and collector. He, along with his wife Rosemarie Haag Bletter, gifted Kirkland Museum a generous donation of Aesthetic and Christopher Dresser objects, some of which were featured in our Truth, Beauty and Power: Christopher Dresser and The Aesthetic Movement exhibition in 2021 and now on view in Arts & Crafts Gallery 3. Martin has written extensively on Frank Lloyd Wright for various publications, including the New York Review. He recorded a podcast on Wright with them, which you can listen to here. As we continue our celebration of Wright, we caught up with Martin on the iconic architect and Martin’s passion for architecture and the arts.

Kirkland Museum: Why did you first give to Kirkland Museum? 

Martin Filler: All museum donors would like to have their gifts seen and appreciated by the public, but that is difficult with long-established institutions like New York’s Museum of Modern Art, which already has a comprehensive collection of historic design objects. As a compulsive collector who at a late stage of life wanted to reduce my far-too-large number of possessions, I was delighted to discover the Kirkland, a relatively new museum that was interested in expanding their holdings in areas that have long interested me. These include the Arts & Crafts Movement in Britain, and particularly its most important industrial designer, Christopher Dresser, whose work has been a major favorite of mine. The beautiful job the Kirkland did with their 2021 Dresser exhibition fully justified my intuition that this was the best possible final destination for my finest pieces by him, and I’m impressed at how beautifully and intelligently they’ve presented them to the public.

KM: What makes the Kirkland different from other museums?

MF: The Kirkland is markedly different from most other American art institutions in its compact size and focus—and not just physically, which makes a visit there a manageable experience in contrast to encyclopedic museums where it can be difficult to concentrate on just one topic. When you deal with the Kirkland about donations you don’t have to go through layer after layer of bureaucracy and I’ve found all my transactions with them to be a complete pleasure.

KM: How were you initially drawn into architecture? 

MF: I can recall that even as a child of five or six I had vivid impressions of unusual buildings I’d see, especially Howe & Lescaze’s PSFS tower of 1932 in Philadelphia. I went there with my mother when she opened a savings account, and I was instantly blown away by the majestic scale and powerful simplicity of this first masterpiece of International Style architecture in the U.S. Around the same time I had a very similar gut reaction to Frank Furness’s quite different Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts of 1876, also in Philly, which stunned me with its vivid multicolored brick and terra cotta façade. Why? Pure instinct, I guess, but I was hooked on architecture by the time I entered first grade.

KM: As an architecture historian, what is a project that inspired you most? 

MF: Many works of architecture inspire me all the time for various reasons, but lately I’m particularly thrilled by the Gando Elementary School of 2001 in the African nation of Burkina Faso by the winner of the 2022 Pritzker Architecture Prize, Francis Kéré. I’ve always believed that architecture should be socially useful, not merely beautiful, and this small, inventively conceived structure is not only wonderfully designed, but was also the first school of any kind to be built in the architect’s impoverished hometown. Kéré is committed to improving the lives of his countrymen through his singular talent, and I find that more inspiring than anything else.

KM: What about Frank Lloyd Wright and his work interest you the most?

MF: I never cease to be amazed at the way Wright’s architecture communicates so directly with the general public and not only architecture specialists. When I visit his buildings across America, I know I won’t be encountering just the European and Asian architecture students and “architourists” who are commonplace visitors to other landmarks of modern architecture, but instead, I’ll find ordinary folks who have heard of Wright even if they know little else about architecture. I’m certain that this strong populist drawing power would please Wright more than anything else, and it speaks to his ability to express deep architectural values—protective shelter, spiritual harmony and love of the land—that can bring diverse people together.

KM: How does Wright’s work remain relevant?

MF: Wright not only remains perpetually relevant but is perhaps even more so today than in his lifetime because of the increased urgency surrounding ecologically responsive and sustainable design. His sensitivity to natural settings, his disdain for purely technological solutions to architectural problems, and his respect for local land-use practices—his mother’s family farmed a great valley in Wisconsin, where their conservation values were impressed on him early on—make him a relevant figure to this day. His weak point was an over-fondness for the private automobile as America’s principal form of transportation. But, since he was so attuned to moving with the times, I’m sure he’d applaud current movements away from fossil fuels to electricity and other renewable energy sources.

KM: What are your thoughts on Wright’s philosophy on a “total work of art?

MF: Wright was a child of his times in valuing the late 19^th century concept of “the total work of art,” in which all elements of an architectural design— from landscape, to building, to interior decoration—were all under the control of a single artistic arbiter. On the one hand, this gave great unity to an overall design, as opposed to the hodgepodge of discordant elements typical of mainstream Victorian design when Wright was growing up. On the other hand, it limited clients’ ability to adjust an interior to their personal taste. Wright’s fully thought-out schemes made it difficult to introduce furniture from other periods—forget family heirlooms and his highly detailed walls did not provide adequate space for hanging artworks. But his admirers were willing to submit to his bossy genius in order to experience the many other benefits of dwelling in his revolutionary and life-affirming houses.