Lecture: Frank Lloyd Wright's Bogk House: A Bold Experiment in Milwaukee

This lecture explores the house that Frank Lloyd Wright designed for Frederick C. and Katherine G. Bogk in Milwaukee in 1916 at a pivotal moment in his architectural practice. Restless with the themes he had perfected in the previous decade, he pursued new challenges devising ornament informed by and meant to resonate profoundly with non-western sources. The Bogks provided him with a platform for this experiment. They were second-generation German Americans from modest family origins who had achieved a measure of wealth and status in turn-of-the-century Milwaukee. In selecting Wright as their architect, they departed from prevailing social expectations. This talk, sharing the findings of the recently published book by Anthony Alofsin and Richard L. Cleary, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Bogk House: A Bold Experiment, draws on new archival research and unpublished drawings to situate this unusual house in the context of Wright’s networks in Milwaukee, in the Midwest, and across the globe. It offers fresh insights into a perplexing phase of Wright’s career.

This lecture is supported by the University Lectures Committee. It is sponsored by the Department of Art History, and co-sponsored by the Department of Design Studies, the Nancy M. Bruce Center for Design and Material Culture, and the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture.

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Host or Publisher UW madison Art History