Frank Lloyd Wright

Flashback

Accepting his American Institute of Architects gold medal at 80, America's cantankerous master builder proclaimed, "Well, it's about time!" Frank Lloyd Wright, who appeared to be God's idea of an architect—the snowy mane, the •e, cap •e the broadbrim hat—was living proof of the r naxim "Form follows function." Louis Sullivan's genius protege had his beginnings on the prairie, his spiraling swan song, the Guggenheim Museum, in the hard heart of New York, and over a 70-year career gave the world many of its great structures. In February the Museum of Modem Art honors Wright with the most comprehensive retrospective since his death in 1959.

MATTHEW TURNAUER