Musician, translator, doctor, and modern architecture patron: All four descriptors apply to a brilliant if overlooked woman who was born well over 100 years ago, in 1903. But Edith Farnsworth, whose last name is easily recognizable to midcentury-design buffs, is now the subject of not one but two exhibitions at her former Illinois home, with the recent openings of “Edith Farnsworth’s Country House” and “Edith Farnsworth Reconsidered” at Mies van der Rohe’s historic Farnsworth House.
The exhibitions have been unveiled after a series of challenges for the National Trust site. Not only was the house forced to temporarily close this past spring due to the coronavirus pandemic, but it also soon faced a threat of another kind—serious floods. Now, with the house reopened and tour protocols adapted to accommodate social distancing, the general public will be able to learn more about the enigma who was Edith Farnsworth.
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As Scott Mehaffey, executive director of Farnsworth House and curator of “Edith Farnsworth’s Country House,” explains to AD PRO, Farnsworth the woman has often been “dismissed as a rumored spurned ex-lover” of Van der Rohe. But, Mehaffey stresses, “she was an amazing woman, and was so far ahead of her time. She decided not to marry or have children, and was a classically trained violinist who studied in Italy, traveled throughout Europe, and then went on to became one of the leading kidney research doctors in the world.”
For Farnsworth, the house was used as a pastoral escape from her busy day-to-day work life. It was a place where she could play violin, translate Italian poetry, and explore her other many interests. (Farnsworth was an avid bird-watcher and fan of photography—not to mention, a speaker of seven different languages.) “She was so super intelligent and so well-read,” Mehaffey notes. At another point, he adds, “I think she was every bit Mies’s intellectual equal, if not his superior.”
And yet “she’s a bit of a mystery,” Mehaffey admits. “We’re putting the pieces together.… There’s no one central archive about Farnsworth or the Farnsworth House.”
As for his own curatorial efforts, Mehaffey is seeking to dispel a common misconception, at least within design history circles. The fact that during Edith’s own era she left dishes in the sink and ashtrays scattered about implied to some that compared to the house’s subsequent owner, Peter Palumbo, she didn’t adequately care about the architectural masterpiece. But as Mehaffey stresses, “[Palumbo] eventually made it into a museum, but for her, it was a country house.”
That idea goes to the heart of the new “Edith Farnsworth’s Country House” exhibition. For the show, Mehaffey has reinstalled the types of comfortable, organic furniture Farnsworth herself used. That means Italian and Scandinavian pieces, as opposed to Van der Rohe’s own designs—which were in Farnsworth's opinion too boxy. Eventually, the house’s furniture will be restored to its current status quo, which features Van der Rohe pieces from the Palumbo period. A fantasy destination for those who wish to worship at the altar of his magnificent work, but not in fact, a complete reflection of a lived-in home, as it was initially intended to be.
