Founded by Frank Lloyd Wright, famed Taliesin school is closing

2020/1/28©Chicago Tribune
Interior of the classroom/drafting studio at Taliesin West. - Mike Siegel/Seattle Times/TNS

Founded by Frank Lloyd Wright during the Great Depression, the famous school of architecture that once bore his name will close at the end of June, the school announced Tuesday.

Called the School of Architecture at Taliesin and established by Wright and his wife Olgivanna in 1932, the accredited private graduate school offered a three-year master’s program that loomed large in the world of architecture because of its celebrated history and espousal of Wright’s philosophy of “organic architecture.”

Its early cohorts of students, known as “apprentices,” were part of what Wright and his wife called the Taliesin Fellowship. Initially located in Wright’s Taliesin compound in Spring Green, Wis., the school later expanded to Wright’s Taliesin West retreat in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Students rotated between the two Taliesins, spending the winter in Arizona. They served as both a source of income and labor for Wright during the bleak Depression years when building largely ground to a halt. Some later worked with the architect on such renowned projects as his spiraling Guggenheim Museum in New York.

“This is a sad and somber day for our school, our students and staff and the architecture community,” Dan Schweiker, chair of the school’s board of governors said in a news release issued Tuesday. The release added that the board made the “gut-wrenching” decision to close to the school on Saturday.

Schweiker added: “We did everything possible to fight for (the school’s) survival but due to other forces it was not meant to be.”

Schweiker did not elaborate. But the news release said the board was unable to reach an agreement with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation to keep the school open. The foundation, based in Scottsdale, owns the two Taliesin properties, which are open for public tours.

For its part, the foundation appeared to shift blame for the closing to the school’s board.

Leaders of the board told the foundation that the school “did not have a sustainable business model that would allow it to maintain its operations as an accredited program,” the foundation said in a news release.

But the school’s board did not approve a plan that would have allowed the school to develop new programs for which accreditation was not required and would have let second- and third-year students to finish their education, the foundation said.

“We are disappointed that (the plan) was not approved” by the school’s full board, Stuart Graff, the foundation’s president said.

In an email to the Chicago Tribune, the school’s president, Aaron Betsky, responded that the school had come up with a sustainable business model and accused the foundation of making unreasonable financial demands.

“The foundation offered us an ultimatum: Close by the end of July, or continue for one more year and one more year only, but only after giving up accreditation,” Betsky wrote.

In the wake of the decision to close the school, the foundation plans to expand educational programs, including K-12 teaching, adult education and programs for architects, preservation specialists and design professionals.

About 30 students are now enrolled at the school, according to its news release. The school is working out an agreement with a design school at Arizona State University that will let the students transfer credits to that school and get their degrees, it said in its news release.

Graff also promised to be sure that the shutdown “occurs in the best interests of the students.”

The decision to close the Taliesin school comes three years after it changed its name to the School of Architecture at Taliesin from the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture and sought to gain financial independence from the foundation.

At the time, Betsky, then the school’s dean, said: “Adopting this new name … helps us secure our identity as an experimental, forward-looking architecture program rooted in the Taliesin Fellowship.”

The school’s closure comes at a time when the architect’s renown remains high.

Last year, the cultural arm of the United Nations placed eight Wright-designed buildings, including both Taliesin complexes as well as the Unity Temple in Oak Park, Ill., and Chicago’s Robie House, on the UNESCO World Heritage List, which honors sites of global cultural and natural significance.

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(Kamin is a Chicago Tribune critic.)

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