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EVANSTON, Ill. – While Chicago-born architect Marion Mahony Griffin is known primarily for her magnificent drafting style that incorporated architectural plans into dramatic and stylized landscapes, fans say her work has not yet been fully recognized. Northwestern University’s Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art hopes to change that with its upcoming exhibit “Marion Mahony Griffin Drawings: The Form of Nature.” To be held Sept. 23 through Dec. 4, 2005, the exhibit will be the first devoted to Mahony Griffin’s graphic work and will present a new critical interpretation of her art as a largely independent and significant contribution to the history of design.
The first woman licensed to practice architecture in the United States, Mahony Griffin began her career in Frank Lloyd Wright's studio, where she developed the striking "Japanese-style" presentation drawings associated with Wright's office. In 1911 she married fellow architect Walter Burley Griffin, and together they embarked on a career that including the experimental Rock Crest, Rock Glen residential development in Mason City, Iowa, and the winning plan for the Federal Capital of Australia at Canberra.
Like her husband and collaborator, Mahony Griffin believed that buildings should reflect the character and culture of their natural surroundings. Her architectural presentation drawings are distinctive in their tall, narrow format, with a mixture of landscaped horticulture and natural growth linking the structure to its natural environment. By emphasizing natural materials and continuous horizontals, her drawings illustrated that architectural design and forms of the natural landscape are inseparable.
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Drawn primarily from the Block Museum's collections, The Form of Nature will include a number of the Griffins' presentation drawings created for prominent architectural commissions in the United States, as well as examples of Mahony Griffin's work as a landscape architect, and her little-known series of intricate botanical drawings and paintings of Australian landscapes.
"The juxtaposition of Mahony Griffin's architectural renderings and her botanical drawings will foster a better understanding of her work and create new interest in Mahony Griffin as an artist," said David Alan Robertson, director of the Block Museum. "This exhibition will present Mahony Griffin as a unique, talented artist in her own right."
Accompanying the exhibition will be a catalogue with essays on Mahony Griffin, color reproductions of her work, and, for the first time, unedited passages from Mahony Griffin's autobiographical manuscript The Magic of America.
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"I have been impressed by the work of Mahony Griffin leading to this exhibition,” said David Van Zelst, president of landscape artichtectural firm Van Zelst, Wadsworth, Ill. “Her landscape drawings are beautiful works of art. In working with clients in the Midwest –where time and weather have had adverse effects on the best-designed landscapes, we have renovated gardens designed by noted landscape architects of the last century and thus share an interest with the Block in studying Mahony Griffin's artistic and landscape contributions."
Van Zelst and his company will serve as principal underwriter of the Mahony Griffin catalogue.
Related events at the Block Museum will include a private donor opening co-sponsored by the Australian Consulate-General, a daylong symposium on Nov. 5 in which scholars from the United States and Australia will examine Mahony Griffin's life and the significance of her work, and a talk on Nov. 10 by award-winning landscape photographer Linda Oyama Bryan.