March 13, 2023

"How to Get Behind the Scenes at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin?... The writer gets a room of her own at the architect’s former home in the Wisconsin hills. A weekend workshop offers ample time to explore the grounds."

A NYT travel article. The author, Elain Glusac, takes a baking workshop.

When I read "A weekend workshop offers ample time to explore the grounds," I thought they were saying there's not all that much to see in this part of Wisconsin, but, calming down, I think it just means that you won't be in the baking class constantly, and there will be blocks of time when you can walk around the private property that is part of Taliesin. I don't think they are saying it wouldn't be a good idea to base yourself in this area — Spring Green — for a longer time.

Indeed, they don't even mention the American Players Theater, which is right down the road. This season's tickets go on sale today — here! Of course, there are many hikes beyond the private Taliesin grounds. And probably nearly everyone needs to get a look at the House on the Rock.

Back to the NYT article:
[T]he program began on a practical level when our class of nine met at the Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center — a building in Wright’s signature Prairie style, characterized by strong horizontal lines and organic materials such as stone and wood — where picture windows frame views of the Wisconsin River. There, a framed essay by Wright entitled “Why I Love Wisconsin” extolled the people, the barns and the hilly landscape “that picks you up in its arms and, so gently, almost lovingly, cradles you.” 
“I love her,” he wrote, referring to Wisconsin, “because she has not so many snobs.”...
Here's a list of the various workshops available at Taliesin.

From the Wright essay, linked above, there's this about landscape preferences, and it resonates with me:
More dramatic elsewhere, perhaps more strange, more thrilling, more grand, too, but nothing that picks you up in its arms and so gently, almost lovingly, cradles you as do these southwestern Wisconsin hills. These ranges of low hills that make these fertile valleys of southwestern Wisconsin by leading down to the great sandy plain that was once the bed of a mightier Wisconsin river than any of us have ever seen. 
I doubt if that vast river flood were more beautiful then, however, than this wide, slow-winding, curving stream in the broad sand bed, where gleaming sand bars make curved beaches and shaded shores to be overhung by masses of great greenery....

So “human” is this countryside in scale and feeling. “Pastoral” beauty, I believe, the poets call it. More like Tuscany, perhaps, than any other land, but the Florentines that roamed those hills never saw such wild flowers as we see any spring, if the snow has been plentiful. The snow usually is plentiful and the cold too....

19 comments:

Kate said...

..."where picture windows frame views of the Wisconsin River. There, a framed essay"...

Too many frames.

Lurker21 said...

Remember when Stalin's daughter left Taliesin West because she found it too collectivist?

gilbar said...

will it rain while we're there?
are we staying IN the Frank Lloyd Wright house?
i guess i'm asking.. Will we need to bring umbrellas?

Ann Althouse said...

@Kate

Good catch. They need a word editor!

Ann Althouse said...

@gilbar

It's a 37,000-square-foot home, once the architecture studio.

There were 9 people in the workshop: "The group split residencies on the property between Tan-y-Deri, the 1908 house Wright built for his sister Jane Porter, and his 1949 Midway Barn, remodeled indoors with basic accommodations. My second-floor bedroom with a shared bath at Tan-y-Deri, furnished with an Arts-and-Crafts-style wooden bed and dresser, took in the estate’s fields of drying corn and shorn rye from diamond-paned leaded glass windows."

Barn with basic accommodations!

MadisonMan said...

I wonder if the person taking the baking workshop was using a gas stove, and how the carbon footprint necessary for relocation to Spring Green was mitigated. These are the things that are important to the NYTimes Editors.

gilbar said...

Thanx Professor! And your House on The Rock is pretty cool

Heartless Aztec said...

That area and the LaCrosse area are my favorite parts of Wisconsin - and the grave of Tom Blake in Ashton.

wildswan said...

On your way to or from the Frank Lloyd Wright house you could drive along the Great River Road. It runs along the Mississippi and the Wisconsin empties into the Mississippi about sixty miles from Spring Green. The road to the confluence shows frame after frame of beautiful pastoral landscapes framed by oaks; the Great River Road runs next to the Mississippi next to the coulees and bluffs; and above the Mississippi is a hidden Great River Road, the Mississippi flyway for migrating birds.

gadfly said...

Heartless Aztec said...
That area and the LaCrosse area are my favorite parts of Wisconsin - and the grave of Tom Blake in Ashton.

Saint Peters is the only cemetery on Dane County K in the wide-spot-in-the-road called Ashton, WI and there is no grave for Tom Blake listed therein. Back in the good old days, I lived off Airport Rd, just a few miles from Saint Peters Catholic Church. Middleton/Cross Plains is relatively a long way from The Holy City or Taliesin.

So "who dat" Tom Blake?

Andrew said...

It's really odd to me that the article barely mentions the most infamous fact about Taliesin. Wright's mistress and several others were murdered there. This is relegated to a parenthetical: "(Her life ended violently when a servant killed her and six others and set fire to Taliesin in 1914; it was rebuilt then and again after a subsequent 1925 fire.)"

There's a brief Smithsonian video on the subject here:
https://youtu.be/CrPEN5FUgE0

Interested Bystander said...

Friends of ours own a FLW home nearby to you, professor. You may know them since you both worked at the same U. We’ve had the pleasure of staying in the home several times. It’s no Taleisin but is unique. Lots of built in furniture, clerestory windows and not a 90 degree angle to be found. Lovely heated concrete floors and, oddly, a water heater standing in the corner of the kitchen. He didn’t even bother to design a closet for it. It seems kitchens were just a utility, an afterthought for Wright.

steve uhr said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Drake 8 said...

It's hard for me to think of anything but Stalin's daughter's awful experience at the commune. Imagine going through all the trouble to escape the USSR only to end up entangled with a commune.

BG said...

We learned about Frank Lloyd Wright when I was in grade school (MANY years ago, when they still taught state history.) Then as a young adult I lived in that area of the state for 15 years. There were people very upset that his body was exhumed, cremated and sent to be mixed with the ashes of his last wife when she passed away. I've visited the Unity cemetery a few times. Very peaceful. I had always heard that his last wish had been to be buried near Taliesen (East).

When I was working in a local nursing home, I answered the phone and it was Olgivanna. She called the home to wish one of the residents a happy birthday, if I remember correctly. The resident had once owned a grocery store in Dodgeville and had given the Wright's credit when they didn't have any money.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

been to both. Spring Green is lovely.

Frank Lloyd Wright House is a wonderful tour.
House on the rock is a nightmare.

Smilin' Jack said...

House on the Rock is much cooler than Taliesin.

Heartless Aztec said...

@gadfly - Oops. Ashland, Wisconsin.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Blake_(surfer)

Heartless Aztec said...

@gadfly - Further oops. In my dotage I have run together a series of little towns in Wisconsin that I only traveled to once. Add the town of Washburn to the list of my following Tom Blake's life Wisconsin travels. What a beautiful area of America.