Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Past owners to flavor interior of Bachman-Wilson House
Transporting and rebuilding the Bachman-Wilson House were the two primary challenges associated with the Frank Lloyd Wright designed structure that opens next month at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. They were hardly the only challenges facing the museum staff.
There also was the matter of staging the interior of the 1,800-square-foot home and capturing what Wright might have described as its “soul.”
Curator Dylan Turk was tasked with making the house feel accessible and livable to first-time visitors while tying together the history of the house and its previous owners. Its most recent owners, Lawrence and Sharon Tarantino, were valuable resources, but the museum wanted elements of everyone who owned the home, beginning with Gloria Bachman and Abe Wilson. More than 60 years ago, they approached Wright about building the house.
“I didn’t want to just transport our visitors to the home and its original owners or the most recent owners,” Turk said. “There were other owners, and we wanted to incorporate them as well. With all the books you see, they represent the history of the owners, what they did for a living. What they were interested in, how the house evolved, we considered all of those things.”
While others on the museum staff were working to get the home from Millstone, N.J., to Bentonville or trying to figure out how to get boards warped by time and Arkansas humidity to bend back into place, Turk was researching the families who called the iconic house a home.
Turk said he was able to incorporate elements of each family into the house’s interior with varying degrees of success.
He visited with with the Tarantinos, who lived in the house from 1988 until it was disassembled in 2014. Other families required extensive research through property records, books on Wright, newspaper and magazine articles and correspondence with Wright or the foundation and conservancy that have helped preserve his legacy.
Bachman and Wilson petitioned Wright to build the house in 1954. Wright’s design of the home, including a landing outside to help make canoe trips on a nearby river easier, came from conversations with Bachman and Wilson.
They sold the home in 1967 to the Gabe family, who counted ceramics and photography among their hobbies. They lived there until the early 1970s and hosted annual tours of the home before selling it to Felix and Richard Fabrizzo, two doctors who used the property primarily as a getaway, Turk said.
Turk said he knows the least about the Fabrizzos and, naturally, has the most information on Lawrence and Sharon Tarantino, the house’s most recent residents.
Books on medicine, photography and art are among the items displayed in the home. Sculptures, including one by Lawrence Tarantino, also are on display. There is no art on the mahogany walls of the house.
What is displayed now will evolve over time.
Throughout the process the Tarantinos, who are an architecture and design team, provided help to Crystal Bridges, including a visit last week. They arrived at the home for their first tour since completion with a suitcase full of memories.
Included was an aging copy of The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, its red cover fading. Sharon Tarantino decided to bring the book just days before making the trip to Arkansas.
“Anything we felt was important part of the house and its history we’d passed along to the museum, but at the last minute realized we had more,” Sharon Tarantino said. “We realized they could use the history of the Millstone Valley where the house stood and catalog of Frank Lloyd Wright houses. We used to carry that around with us. It was our Frank Lloyd Wright bible.”
Owners of homes designed by Wright and other devotees of the architect are a tightknit group. Whenever occasions arose to meet others like themselves, the Tarantinos would take the book and have it signed.
It was a tradition they began nearly 20 years ago during the first meeting of the Frank Lloyd Wright Conservancy. Included are signatures from Abe Wilson, the house’s original owner and his daughter, Chana Wilson.
Crystal Bridges opened the home last week for media and VIP tours, and Chana Wilson attended. She signed the book on Friday afternoon during a visit with the Tarantinos.
During those early tours the book was prominently displayed on one of the Wright-designed tables in the living room. Eventually, it will make its way onto one of the bookshelves that run the length of the room.
Museum chief engagement officer Niki Stewart said the book helps tie the history of the home and its owners together, plus it provides a link to other Wright works and architects who were inspired by him. Wright was a mentor to Fayetteville’s Fay Jones, who served as an inspiration for Crystal Bridges architect Moshe Safdie.
“It was clear the Tarantinos were so excited to be home again,” Stewart said. “They were overwhelmed with emotion. Seeing them with the suitcase of books and other decorations was a good reminder that this isn’t just a structure. It’s a home, and it tells the stories of the people who lived here.”