Part of the Frank Lloyd Wright and the American Landscape Lecture Series, this presentation features guest speaker Professor Anna Andrzejewski. This lecture will examine how Frank Lloyd Wright’s Wisconsin roots shaped his work and explore why his ideas about nature, technology, and community remain profoundly relevant today in our modern age of AI and climate change.
An eligible, socially awkward heir to a brewery empire boards a cruise ship bound for New York and soon becomes the target of the single ladies on the vessel, as well as a trio of card sharks out to swindle the pushover out of his money, until one of them starts to fall for him romantically. Starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda, directed by Preston Sturges.
Alone at his fantastic estate known as Xanadu, 70-year-old Charles Foster Kane dies, uttering only the single word Rosebud. So ends the odyssey of a life ... and begins a fabulous tale of the rise to wealth and power—and ultimate fall—of a complex man: A boy abandoned by his parents inherits a fortune, builds a global newspaper empire and aspires to become President of the United States, but he loses everything over an affair with an untalented nightclub singer. This fascinating story unfolds through the eyes of the people important to the tycoon—each showing a different aspect of Citizen Kane. Frequently regarded as the best American film ever made; winner of an Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay; and nominated for an additional eight Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor.
Part of the Frank Lloyd Wright and the American Landscape Lecture Series, this presentation features guest speaker Curt Meine. He will explore the deep relationship between the Driftless Area landscape and Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural vision, discussing what lessons that historical connection holds for contemporary community resilience and environmental stewardship.
A silver screen gem about an aging silent-film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity and enlists a down-on-his-luck, opportunistic young screenwriter to aid her comeback, but her maniacal ego turns the challenge into an uphill battle. Starring William Holden, Gloria Swanson, and Erich von Stroheim; directed by Billy Wilder.
Explore how two parallel 20th-century modernist movements—jazz and architecture—reshaped cultural landscapes by rethinking form, function, and the relationship between tradition and innovation. The harmonic structures used by American jazz musicians are remarkably similar to those used by 20th-century American architects. From Louis Armstrong to Miles Davis, and Frank Lloyd Wright to William Krisel, both movements helped create a new sense of the future that was born in the 1920s and flourished in the 1960s, ushering in a new era of style, cool, and transformation.ketplace! Jazz trumpeter Delbert Anderson joins guitarist and cedar flutist Wade Fernandez and bassist Felix Sainz, Jr. for a unique and exciting musical experience that celebrates the connections between the American Midwest and Southwest. Presented by Little Eagle Arts Foundation (LEAF) and Taliesin Preservation, this concert reflects both Frank Lloyd Wright’s ties to Wisconsin and Arizona and LEAF’s representation of Native artists from the Great Lakes area and beyond. Experience a one-night-only convergence of these three accomplished musicians on the historic Hillside Theater stage.
Romance becomes psychodrama in the elegantly crafted Rebecca, Alfred Hitchcock’s first foray into Hollywood filmmaking. A dreamlike adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel, the film stars the enchanting Joan Fontaine as a young woman who believes she has found her heart’s desire when she marries the dashing aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter (played with cunning vulnerability by Laurence Olivier). But upon moving to Manderley—her groom’s baroque ancestral mansion—she soon learns that his deceased wife haunts not only the estate but the temperamental, brooding Maxim as well. The start of Hitchcock’s legendary collaboration with producer David O. Selznick, this elegiac gothic vision, captured in stunning black and white by George Barnes, took home the Academy Awards for best picture and best cinematography.
