Letters and manuscripts related to the never-published catalog to the exhibition "Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect," held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Nov. 12, 1940-Jan. 5, 1941.

Preface / John Elderfield -- Introduction / Peter Reed and William Kaizen -- The show to end all shows : Frank Lloyd Wright and the museum of modern art, 1940 / Kathryn Smith -- Letters and telegrams -- Introduction / William Kaizen -- Original manuscripts -- Introduction / Peter Reed -- Frank Lloyd Wright / Walter Curt Behrendt -- Frank Lloyd Wright / Walter Curt Behrendt / Edited by Frank Lloyd Wright -- To my critics / Frank Lloyd Wright -- Frank Lloyd Wright : his influence in America / Talbot Hamlin -- Wright's influence abroad / Henry-Russell Hitchcock -- Builder and poet-Frank Lloyd Wright / Fiske Kimball -- The early impress of Japan on Wright's art / Grant Manson -- "Museum of modern art opens large exhibition of the work of Frank Lloyd Wright" / John McAndrew -- Structure and design in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright / Richard Neutra -- My Frank Lloyd Wright / Alvar Aalto -- Untitled / Harwell Hamilton Harris -- 1940 : Frank Lloyd Wright / Ludwig Mies van der Rohe -- To meet-to know-to battle-to love-Frank Lloyd Wright / Edgar J. Kaufmann, Sr -- Untitled / Liliane Kaufmann -- Untitled / Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. -- Plates -- Introduction / William Kaizen.

"Simultaneously excruciating and hurried in its execution, Frank Lloyd Wright, American Architect was not the show it was intended to be - "the show to end all shows," in Wright's ambitious phrase. Furthermore, the accompanying publication planned by the Museum (which commissioned essays from Alvar Aalto, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Richard Neutra, Mies van der Rohe, and other leading members of the architectural community) hit a serious roadblock in Wright's objection to one essay in the book, after an incendiary exchange of correspondence, including the architect's threat to cancel the show, the book was shelved, in the sixty-odd years since, the essays that the Museum commissioned have remained in its files, most of them lost to public view. Now, for the first time in one volume, the Museum is publishing the entire surviving group, along with a full selection of the letters and telegrams between Wright, the Museum, and others detailing the face-off between the Museum and the architect. Accompanying these documents is an extensive essay by the noted Frank Lloyd Wright scholar Kathryn Smith, who provides a full account of the exhibition, both as it was and as it was intended to be - including an unrealized plan to erect one of Wright's Usonian Houses in the MoMA garden."--BOOK JACKET.