For my internship this summer, I work for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation as an intern in the Collection Department. It is an in-person internship. Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation is divided into different departments. In Taliesin, Wisconsin, there is only Preservation Department which is about five people. Most of the administration departments including marketing, licensing, preservation, collection, human resource and financial are in Taliesin West, Arizona. There are more than forty people working onsite right now.
My first project in this internship is about Wright's financial documents including receipts, checks, inventories, and some documents related to tax. There are 16 banker boxes of these papers, and all are organized in different orders (Some of these even have no logic). My task is to re-organize these, write finding aid, and therefore make it more accessible for future scholars. It is actually more interesting than it sounds. Reading receipts from the 1950s is just like riding on a time machine. Receipts won't lie. It is a good resource to see how much chocolate milk was consumed in Taliesin, what kind of movie Wright rented directly from Paramount, 21 Century, and Warner Bro., and how many phone calls and laundry he made during his stay in the Plaza Hotel (maybe when he was working on Guggenheim). You can tell how people order and ship stuffs at that moment, and get a sense of how Wright's firm communicated with clients and suppliers (Can you imagine using telegram to discuss design?). The funniest thing is to read letters asking Wright to pay his bill. For me, this project gave me multiple experiences in historic preservation (basic skills of writing finding aids, and organizing archives, just like what we learned from HSPV 600) and architecture firm management.
My next task extending from this project is to take a look into the receipts only related to nursery and gardening, making a list and brief comparison between the current landscape plan to the previous one. It is a project asked by the Preservation Department to know what kind of plant Wright bought for Taliesin West and make this report as a reference for their future landscape preservation plan. As for the overall preservation, the Foundation has worked with Harboe Architects to develop the Preservation Master Plan. However, that plan is oriented to buildings and lacks information on the landscape. My previous project about the receipts is therefore a great primary resource for Preservation Department to know the exact plants in Taliesin West. It is an interesting and extraordinary approach to preservation since it is not only for its focus but also for the resources. It is profound for me to engage in this project. I felt grateful to my supervisor and the vice president of Preservation to consider my background and arrange this task for me.
During this internship, I met with Rebecca and Deangela who are the preservation manager here. Rebecca has working experience in construction before she comes to Taliesin West, and Deangela did several works related to development in New Mexico. It is interesting to know more about the upcoming replacement of the canvas roof and how the mock-up and monitoring work in Taliesin West, also see how people with different backgrounds work together in preservation here. I also talked to Fred who is the vice president of Preservation at the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. From his viewpoint, he encouraged students in this field to learn more about financial management and public presentation.
The internship at the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation is a pleasant experience. From the schedule and the task arrangement, I could tell people here do care about what you can learn from this internship and what you can put on your resume. This on-site internship provides people with housing to live in the legendary Taliesin West, which gave me an opportunity to experience this modern heritage from an unusual perspective. I will recommend this internship to future students in historic preservation.
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