Henry Luce, owner of Life, Time, Fortune and Architectural Forum in 1937, recognized Frank Lloyd Wright’s immense talent, though clearly he did so for his own ends. Author or “The American Century” Luce needed an all-American poster boy for his campaign purposes. Despite Wright’s immense unpopularity at the time, Luce featured him on the cover of Time and promoted him in his three other journals. That Luce’s ideals were not those of Wright mattered little. Wright became the most popular American architect in history. But how very odd that decidedly artificial mediation could so effectively disseminate and popularize an architecture whose essence was authenticity
