Photo of the Edith Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois. Victor Grigas, 2023. Wikimedia Commons.
This is the third program in the 2025 Grand Homes and Gardens Speaker Series, The Quality of Doing: Mid-Century Modern Grand Homes & Gardens, featuring four scholars who will look at the work of Mid-Century Modern architects and designers through the lens of landmark homes and gardens across the United States. Learn more about the series and purchase series tickets.
A careful balance of humanity, art, and nature, the iconic Edith Farnsworth House was built as a weekend retreat for its namesake, prominent Chicago nephrologist, musician, and poet Dr. Edith Farnsworth. The house was the first domestic project in America for architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and would serve as a pivotal moment for his long career. This talk with Nora Wendl, Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of New Mexico, will examine the design influence and direction of Dr. Farnsworth in artistic and professional partnership with van der Rohe, drawing from her most recent book, Almost Nothing: Reclaiming Edith Farnsworth (University of Illinois Press, 2025).
All talks begin at 6:30 p.m. in Morven’s Stockton Education Center. Doors and the virtual waiting room open at 6:00 p.m. A Zoom link will be sent to all virtual participants upon registration. Light refreshments inspired by each site will be provided for in-person attendees. Please note our speaker will be joining this program via Zoom and streamed live for our in-person audience in the Stockton Education Center.
About the Speaker
Nora Wendl is an essayist, artist, editor, and associate professor of architecture at the University of New Mexico, where she teaches studio and theory. Wendl’s work, across scales and media, subverts the received narratives that underpin architectural historiography. She engages feminist archival practices to create essays, books, installations, photographs, and films that offer new forms and frameworks for historicizing the built and unbuilt environments. These works have been supported by the Graham Foundation, Santa Fe Art Institute, and National Trust for Historic Preservation, among other institutions. She has exhibited and published widely, and her most recent book, Almost Nothing: Reclaiming Edith Farnsworth (University of Illinois Press, 2025), was shortlisted for the 2022 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. From 2021 – 2024, she was the Executive Editor of the Journal of Architectural Education.
This program is sponsored by Mrs. G Appliances. The 2025 Grand Homes and Gardens series is sponsored by Bryn Mawr Trust.
Ticket Prices
Tickets can be purchased for the full series or for individual programs (see individual program links listed above). FOR SERIES TICKETS: please disregard the “when would you like to visit?” prompt and leave it set to March 20. A specific date is not necessary to purchase series tickets. FOR MORVEN MEMBERS: Please note that you must login into your Morven Member account in the upper righthand corner of the registration page in order to access the member rate.
