Featured Presenters

Winter Webinars 2025

Backstories: Hidden Histories of Edith Farnsworth House

In theatre, movies, and literature, backstories are past events and circumstances that contribute to our understanding of what’s happening now – and this is also applicable to understanding historic sites like the Edith Farnsworth House. Join us for our annual winter webinar series, this year with three exciting conversations about the lesser-known aspects or “hidden histories” of this legendary place.

January recording available HERE, February recording available HERE, and March recording coming soon .

Details and links below!

About Smithsonian Associates: The largest museum-based education program in the world, Smithsonian Associates produces vibrant educational and cultural programming that offers unparalleled access to the Smithsonian’s world of knowledge. Smithsonian Associates programs are now offered simultaneously in person and online, allowing you to enjoy our high-quality, engaging and varied programs on the National Mall or from the comfort of your home.

Antecedents and Descendants: The Edith Farnsworth House and Its Influences

Sunday, January 26, Recording available soon

Dietrich Neumann and Michelangelo Sabatino in Conversation

More than fifty years after his death, scholars are revisiting Mies van der Rohe’s careers in Europe and America, reassessing his influences, legacy, and impact on contemporary architectural design. Many of Mies’s European projects, both built and unbuilt, foreshadowed the Farnsworth House.

Dietrich Neumann will trace some of the house’s key ideas back to earlier projects by Mies and others and discuss some lesser-known aspects of its construction, in particular its plug-weld connections. The care and attention spent on certain structural details contrasts revealingly with the lack of attention to other crucial aspects of the house. While the court case Mies vs. Farnsworth lingered, a spirited debate about future American architecture was launched by Elizabeth Gordon of House Beautiful, which is still relevant today.

Biographical history, sociocultural influences, and site-specific design responses add depth and context to our contemporary assessments of historical architecture. These elements are integral to maintaining and interpreting historical buildings and sites. Two recent books—The Edith Farnsworth House: Architecture, Preservation, Culture by Michelangelo Sabatino and Mies van der Rohe: An Architect in His Time by Dietrich Neumann—have significantly expanded our understanding of the Edith Farnsworth House.

Join Dietrich Neumann, Professor of the History of Modern Architecture and Urban Studies at Brown University, and Michelangelo Sabatino, Professor of Architectural History and Director of the Ph.D. Program in Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, for an insightful discussion.

Recording HERE.

Landscape Layers and Legacies: Historic Analysis and Redesign of the Edith Farnsworth House Grounds

Sunday, February 16, 1 – 2:15pm CT

Darrel Morrison and Julia Bachrach in Conversation

In the fall of 1944, Dr. Edith Farnsworth chose a site on the banks of the Fox River for her country home and soon selected architect Mies van der Rohe for the project. Dr. Farnsworth didn’t want a fanciful landscape for her country home.  Landscape architect Alfred Caldwell (a disciple of Jens Jensen and colleague of Mies) made some initial improvements to the grounds, but the work was minimal, and the style was naturalistic.

Dr. Farnsworth sold her country home to Peter Palumbo, a successful British businessman in the early 1970s.  Palumbo wanted a much different kind of landscape for the iconic Modern house, and hired Lanning Roper, an American landscape architect who was known for designing private gardens in the United Kingdom.

When the National Trust for Historic Preservation became the owner and steward of the site, it was clear that Palumbo’s landscape couldn’t be maintained, and the Farnsworth era deserved to be interpreted. Before developing a plan for the grounds, the National Trust commissioned historian Julia Bachrach and landscape architects Teska Associates to produce a Cultural Landscape Report for the site.

In response to the findings, landscape architect Darrel Morrison has designed a landscape that integrates elements from the Farnsworth era and earlier and later periods, drawing inspiration from figures like Caldwell, Jens Jensen, and plantswomen Edith Roberts and Elsa Rehman, whose influential book, American Plans for American Gardens, was published originally in 1928.

Join landscape historian Julia Bachrach, author of The City in a Garden: A History of Chicago’s Parks and landscape architect Darrel Morrison, author of Beauty of the Wild: A Life Designing Landscapes Inspired by Nature, as they discuss the history of the Farnsworth’s grounds and development of its new landscape, which is being installed in 2024-2025.

Recording HERE

Two Glass Houses: The Entangled History of the Edith Farnsworth House and the Philip Johnson Glass House

Sunday, March 16, 1 – 2:15pm CT

Scott Mehaffey and Kirsten Reoch in Conversation – in partnership with Smithsonian Associates

From the beginning until today, these houses have an intertwined history – dating back to the 1920s when Johnson first became aware of Mies and visited him at the Bauhaus school in Germany. While Edith Farnsworth waited until 1949 to begin construction of her Mies-designed country house, Johnson was able to design and build his version at a faster pace – painted black instead of white and anchored to the ground on a high ridge of land rather than raised on stilts above a river floodplain.

Important architects and designers from around the world soon began to make pilgrimages to these two glass houses. They became the most written about and photographed international-style homes in the United States, if not the world.

In 1986, the National Trust for Historic Preservation acquired Johnson’s Glass House, and in 2003, the Farnsworth House – both of them opening to the public in the early 2000s. Since then, correspondence and oral histories have revealed a fascinating shared history that inspires visitors from around the world.

Join Scott Mehaffey, Executive Director of the Edith Farnsworth House, and Kirsten Reoch, Executive Director of The Glass House, for an amusing and informative discussion on these icons of the Modern Movement.

Recording available soon!