Happy Anniversary

Wisconsin has a pair of significant architectural milestones to celebrate in 2011, and the Milwaukee Art Museum is marking each with an exhibition.

Annie Block, Mark McMenamin, and Meghan Edwards -- Interior Design, 1/1/2011 3:50:00 PM

Wisconsin has a pair of significant architectural milestones to celebrate in 2011, and the Milwaukee Art Museum is marking each with an exhibition. 

It was a decade ago that Santiago Calatrava completed his first U.S. commission: the museum's $100 million Quadracci Pavilion, a 140,000-square-foot wing topped by a white-painted steel brise soleil that unfolds each morning and folds back up at night, displaying Calatrava's famed engineering brio. "Building a Master­piece: Santiago Calatrava and the Milwaukee Art Mu­seum," opens on September 8 with a selection of drawings, models, and photographs.

Calatrava has said that inspiration for the pavilion came from Wisconsin's native son Frank Lloyd Wright, whose Taliesin house, studio, and school in Spring Green are celebrating their centennial. "Frank Lloyd Wright: Organic Architecture for the 21st Century," opening February 12, pays tribute to Wright's seven-decade career through furniture, models, drawings, and videos highlighting such projects as the S.C. Johnson Wax administration building in nearby Racine, the Fallingwater house in Pennsylvania, and of course the two Taliesins, Spring Green's and Arizona's.