In Honor of Women’s History Month -- Dr. Sharon Grimes will present
Marion Mahony Griffin: Artist and Architect Extraordinaire
Sunday March 29, 2 PM at the Illinois State Museum Thorne Deuel Auditorium
Sponsored by the Dana-Thomas House Foundation in cooporation with the Illinois State Museum
Marion Mahony 1871-1961 -- In recognition of March as Women’s
History Month, Marion Mahony Griffin will be the subject of a presentation
by Dr. Sharon Grimes – Assistant Professor of Art at Greenville College and
Curator/Director of the Richard W. Bock Sculpture Museum. Dr. Grimes
has studied the ground-breaking architect for many years, including her
dissertation “Women in the Studio of Men: Gender, Architectural Practice,
and the Careers of Sophia Hayden Bennett and Marion Mahony Griffin,” 18701960. The presentation will be held at the Illinois State Museum, Spring and
Edwards Street, Springfield, Sunday March 29 at 2 PM. The event is free and
open to the public. For additional information call 217.788.9452.
Marion Mahony was the second woman to graduate in architecture from
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the first to be licensed by
the State of Illinois. Hired by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1895, Mahony worked
designing buildings, furniture, art glass windows, light fixtures, mosaics and
decorative panels. She became known for her beautiful watercolor renderings
of buildings and landscapes. At the Dana-Thomas House she is often credited
with the setting of the Moonchildren fountain.
During her lifetime, her talent was seen as an extension of the
work done by male architects including her husband Walter Burley
Griffin. She would be associated with Wright’s studio for almost
fifteen years and was an important contributor to his reputation.
“Wright and Mahony were two of the prime contributors to the
Wasmuth drawings, a portfolio of design plans published in Berlin
in 1910 that played a crucial role in spreading Wright’s reputation
from America to Europe.” Architectural writer Reyner Banham
called her the “greatest architectural delineator of her generation”.
Carol Kort and Liz Sonneborn (A to Z of American Women in the
Visual Arts)
Dr. Sharon Grimes -- Assistant Professor of Art at Greenville College for
the past 15 years. Currently teaching Historical Survey of Women Artists.
Greenville College BA; Webster University MA in Art with an Emphasis in Art
History Criticism; St. Louis University Ph.D. in American Studies with emphases
in American Art and Visual Culture. Dissertation: Women in the Studio of
Men: Gender, Architectural Practice, and the Careers of Sophia Hayden
Bennett and Marion Mahony Griffin, 1870-1960. She is also the director of the
Richard W. Bock Museum on the Greenville College campus in Greenville, IL.
Dr. Grimes has presented at numerous conferences in the United States
and Europe with one of the most notable at the Oxford (University) Round
Table, Oxford, England. She has also presented at the Delta Kappa Gamma
Society Annual Lambda State Convention on “Famous Illinois Women Artists.”