ART
Frank Lloyd Wright’s
Bachman Wilson House
Relocated and Reconstructed
as an Architectural Exhibit at
Crystal Bridges
Crystal Bridges Museum, founded and created by Alice Walton, has bought and moved Frank Lloyd Wright’s Bachman Wilson House (c.1954), originally located in Somerset County, N.J. to a plot of land adjacent to the museum in Arkansas. It is so easily accessible, it works as an architectural exhibition of the museum.
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| Crystal Bridges' Creator and Founder Alice Walton |
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| Rendering: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Bachman Wilson House |
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| Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is located in the North West Arkansas town of Bentonville. There are major interstate highways and a busy International Airport within a few miles of the museum's site. |
Before the house was purchased by the museum, the three-bedroom, 2,000-square-foot-house had been besieged by flooding from New Jersey's Millstone River. In many ways Crystal Bridges Museum saved the structure from ruin. The museum sent curators and workmen to disassemble and catalog each piece of the house, then shipped it by truck 1000 miles cross-country and rebuilt the structure, mostly using Wright's specifications, in Bentonville, Arkansas.
The whole process is reminescient of the time The Metropolitan Museum of Art did the same with the ancient Egyptian "Temple of Dendur", saving it from being flooded in Egypt, then transporting it half way around the world and reassembling it at their institution in New York City. A heroic alliance of engineering knowledge, money and respect for cultural and art history.
The Bachman Wilson House was originally commissioned by Abraham Wilson, a research chemist turned patent lawyer and his wife, Gloria Bachman, who had met Wright when he was working on the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The last owners in New Jersey, architects and designers Lawrence and Sharon Tarantino, bought the house in 1988 and spent years faithfully restoring it. To their dismay, repeated flooding and water damage forced them to seek a savior who was willing to buy the home and move it to a suitable location.
Crystal Bridges Museum completed the painstaking project in 2015 and the home, in shiny like-new condition, is now one of the many highlights of visiting the museum.
Editor's Note: If you have not yet made Crystal Bridges a destination for your travels, you should. In this publication's opinion, Crystal Bridges is the most complete American Art experience in the entire United States!
(Source: All photos in this article are the property of and under the © Copyright of The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. They were used in this article for educational purposes only. Text referenced information from Crystal Bridges Website and from information reported in The New York Times and other online resources.)
FOOD
Mushroom Chicken Schnitzel
Chicken Cutlets served with a Mushroom Sauce
(From the Atkinson Family Cookbook)
This dish started from a craving for Stroganoff, but the mushroom sauce was the real draw, so we ended up making a chicken version of Rahm Schnitzel (basically Wiener Schnitzel - substituting chicken for veal) with a wonderful mushroom sauce. This entrée is delicious and fun to cook.
INGREDIENTS
• 2 chicken cutlets
butterflied chicken breasts, pound between plastic wrap until 1/4 “.
Note: with the size of today’s chicken breasts today, I think one breast, sliced in-two horizontally, then pounded flat is about right!
• 1 cup lemon juice
• salt & pepper
* 2 eggs (+ 2 Tbs water)
• 1/4 cup flour (approx.)
• 1 cup panko bread crumbs
• 1/4 cup veg. oil + 1/2 stick butter
* sliced lemons for serving
* Standard mushroom and onion cream sauce, like stroganoff but no meat.
DIRECTIONS
For Sauce
• Make the mushroom and onion cream sauce (no meat) like you do for Stroganoff. Place in a serving dish and set aside or refrigerate.
For Cutlets
* In a glass baking dish marinate the flattened cutlets in lemon juice for 1 hour.
(cover with plastic wrap)
* Pat them dry with paper towels
• Season them with salt and pepper on both sides
• Prepare the breading dishes:
#1) 2 eggs whisked with 2 Tbs water
#2) flour covering the bottom of a pan
#3) bread crumbs covering the bottom of a pan
• Dip the seasoned cutlets into the egg, then the flour (shake off the excess), then the bread crumbs (shake off the excess).
• Place them on a cookie sheet, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes.
• Heat the butter and oil in a large skillet.
• Cook each cutlet for 3 to 4 minutes per side until brown, turn over using tongs. (We did 4 min on 1st side, then 2 on second side, removed and made a small slice in thickest part, to check for doneness - 2nd one cooked a little faster. Ours plumped up while cooking. Cooking time depends on how thin your cutlets are pounded.)
Serve
• Serve the (chicken) Schnitzel immediately, with lemon wedges and the warm mushroom sauce. (Sauce can be served poured over the cutlets or on the side.)
(Source: The Atkinson Family Cookbook)
Until later,
Jack
ARTSnFOOD is an online magazine dedicated to providing artists and collectors around the world with highlights of current art exhibitions, and to encourage all readers to invest in and participate in "The Joy of Art"® and culture. All rights reserved. All Concepts, Original Art, Text & Photographs in this posting (which are not credited) are © Copyright 2016 Jack A. Atkinson under all International intellectual property and copyright laws. All gallery, event, museum, fair or festival photographs were taken with permission. Images © individual artists, fabricators, respective owners or assignees.
