Architecture students divide their time between residencies in Scottsdale, Arizona (above), and Spring Green.
In accounts of the on-again-off-again future of the School of Architecture at Taliesin, one constituency is seldom heard from: its students. That’s because they’re afraid. They allege a gradually increasing pattern of harassment designed to drive them away.
Students divide their time between residencies at Taliesin, near Spring Green, and Scottsdale, Arizona, home to both Taliesin West and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. The foundation maintains control of the properties and allows the school to use portions of them.
On Jan. 28 the foundation announced that the school would close. Foundation president and CEO Stuart Graff explained to Architectural Digest, “We just wanted to make sure that in the best interests of the students it was sustainable. Give me a sustainable model, I’m there.”
Two weeks ago, alumni and donors came to the rescue with more than $500,000 and, according to Inside Higher Education, “a sustainable way forward. There was just one problem: They didn’t have the foundation’s blessing.” Instead, the foundation issued a prickly press release criticizing the school’s handling of the situation. On March 14, the foundation’s board announced it was terminating the Memorandum of Understanding, which means the school will close as of July 31 unless the school takes legal action.
The foundation refers all press inquiries to J. Lauren PR, a public relations agency in Tempe, Arizona, which offers no information beyond press releases and refuses requests for interviews with Graff.
Some faculty refer to a “non-disparagement” agreement that they must sign.
One instructor, who asked for anonymity, relates, “The tyrannical way the foundation’s CEO is acting appears to be motivated out of desperation and not by anything resembling clear thinking.”
As Architect magazine notes, the foundation so far seems “more interested in attacking the [school’s] board than reconsidering the school’s closure. Without a change of heart by the foundation, the school remains scheduled to close at the end of the term this spring.”
Students report an oppressive and invasive atmosphere at the Scottsdale campus at Taliesin West. This is illustrated by a campus incident report filed on Nov. 15. It documents a chance encounter between Graff, the foundation’s CEO, and Alex Martinec, a first-year student from New York state. Martinec was walking the emotional support dog that lived with him and his girlfriend.
“I’m the CEO of the foundation here,” Graff yelled. “Who are you? Honestly, who are you?” Graff began to move his arms, appearing to grow increasingly threatening. He continued:
“Go fuck yourself.
“Honestly go fuck yourself.
“Who the fuck do you think you are? You are nobody.”
Martinec’s girlfriend felt so uncomfortable after the incident that she moved away to stay with Florida relatives.
It wasn’t the first such incident. “There have been many reports that we’ve submitted and it seems like they’ve just turned a blind eye on them,” one student says. “There are numerous cases of specifically the CEO harassing the students.”
“Students are made to feel like intruders in the place where we live,” says another. “I would say there are many examples where we have not been treated with respect as humans.”
Faculty members say they suffer the same treatment, but they fear retribution if they speak out. In turn, faculty members warn their students.
“It has been insinuated on multiple occasions that the foundation would be willing to pursue litigation against us for slander if we speak to the press,” says one student. “Most of us are in our 20s. We have a [foundation] CEO who is a lawyer and we don’t know how these things work.”
Martinec, 33, feels more free to speak, having already established a career before joining the school. He says he’s seen fellow students “cry all the time,” especially the first week after the announcement of the school’s closing.
Having enrolled in a unique school that emphases environment and communal experience, the 30 or so full- and part-time students are scrambling to find other, conventional graduate programs. It’s already late in the year to apply to schools. Many students just don’t know what to do.
Graff often points out that the school and foundation are separate organizations. And yet the foundation — and Graff in particular — continually intrudes into school business, reducing the space it is allowed, reducing the number of available classrooms, threatening to charge rent and even interfering with students’ thesis projects.
Students also report that Graff and other foundation members intentionally intimidate, surveil and photograph them. Students are allowed to roam only parts of the Taliesin West campus, and are given maps and warned to stay away from the “historic core.” No alcohol is allowed, except that sold by the foundation. Visiting family members may not stay overnight.
Sources confirm that the foundation closely monitors student social media posts. They use personal email accounts for fear that their school accounts are not secure.
Students report that “chance” encounters with foundation employees on Taliesin West grounds become threatening interrogations. They fear stalking. They allege that it’s an incremental campaign to get rid of the school.
The information blackout extends to tourists. Days after the school’s closure was announced, site tours of student projects at Taliesin West were suspended. Tours returned only recently, after students received “training.” Today, if visitors ask about the controversy, students are instructed to respond, “I don’t know.”
Speaking of his own encounter, Martinec says, “it’s great insight into [Graff] and a bit of a foreshadowing of this event of closing the school, because he even said that. He threatens me with kicking me off the property and also saying, ‘If you don’t listen to what I’m saying, I’ll have the whole school thrown out of here, too.’”
Some believe the foundation is pursuing its own agenda.
“The gift shop at Taliesin West tells you everything you need to know about the closure of the School of Architecture,” writes former Taliesin teaching fellow Ryan Scavnicky in The Architect’s Newspaper.
“Look around it and you will realize there is little gained by the world of architecture from a room full of tourists paying top dollar for home decor with Prairie Style motifs. One can smell the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation cashing in on the aesthetic legacy produced by the work of the late architect.”
“The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
was formed in 1940 as a nonprofit corporation of the Taliesin Fellowship,” Wright wrote in his last will and testament. “The purpose of the Fellowship — a cultural endeavor — is that of perpetuating organic architecture,” he wrote, “and that [purpose] of the Foundation is, in addition, the encouragement of the fine arts by education and teaching of the art of architecture and collateral crafts.”
Graff was appointed CEO and president of the foundation in January 2016. He has a law degree and an MBA. He served previously as an executive at a “furniture care and protection business” and Rubbermaid. Foundation tax records show Graff’s total annual pay at $264,328.
Frank Lloyd Wright is being pepped up as “the latest lifestyle home brand,” according to an article in Curbed. “The foundation tasked with preserving and protecting his legacy wants to build on that substantial brand equity with new product licensing initiatives.” Wright is to be “more of a lifestyle brand.”
Potential products include furniture, home goods, floor coverings, rugs, wall coverings, masonry veneers, hardwood flooring and architectural millwork. As Graff pointed out to Curbed, “Frank Lloyd Wright is known by so many people and embraced. We think there’s a big market out there, if we have the right products.” In defiance of Wright’s wishes, it appears that those products will not include Taliesin-trained architects.
“How are you going to run a school that meets the goals of Frank Lloyd Wright’s will, which demands that the mission itself be a place where architecture is taught? How can you do that if you’re not teaching people to become architects?” asks Benjamin Aranda, of Aranda/Lasch, a New York- and Tucson-based design studio. He’s taught at the School of Architecture at Taliesin.
His professional partner, forbidden from speaking, is Chris Lasch, the School’s current dean.
