Fountainhead, an architectural masterpiece by Frank Lloyd Wright. Photo courtesy of Crescent Sotheby’s International Realty, taken by Douglas Adams.
Last summer, a rare artifact of Usonian style architecture, designed by Frank Lloyd hWright in 1948, hit the real estate market in Jackson, Mississippi. A single-family home held in private ownership for more than seventy years, Lloyd’s late-career masterpiece, called “Fountainhead,” suddenly became available to anyone, at a price of $2.5 million.
In November, though, Fountainhead’s future was secured when the Mississippi Museum of Art (MMA) followed in the tradition of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and other similar institutions and purchased the home as part of its collection. “It is, by far, the largest ever work of art we’ve acquired,” said Betsy Bradley, the Laurie Hearin McRee Director of the museum.
[Read our August 2025 story on Fountainhead, here.]
Bradley described the intention behind the acquisition as akin to any significant piece of Southern art held by the MMA. “The museum’s mission is to create experiences for people to have encounters with great art,” she said. “And so, if you take what we do on a day-to-day basis with objects in our collection . . . we take care of them, we steward them, we interpret them, we offer experiences to the public so that people, wide swathes of people, can learn about the art we are showing. The same is true for this house.”
Fountainhead, an architectural masterpiece by Frank Lloyd Wright. Photo courtesy of Crescent Sotheby’s International Realty, taken by Douglas Adams.
As a result, for the first time ever, the public will have access to this architectural jewel—an exciting addition to the pilgrimage of more than seventy accessible Frank Lloyd Wright properties across America. Fountainhead is a particular example of Wright’s adherence to organic design and harmony with nature, the home organized by leitmotifs of diamond-shaped geometry, following the contours of its landscape on a wooded hillside and assembled without stud walls, sheetrock, brick, tile, carpeting, or paint. Wright signatures are found throughout, including large windows, built-in furniture, and hardwood floors.
Over the course of the next year, the museum will oversee a careful restoration process with an emphasis on Wright’s original intent as designer. “Because it’s been vacant for a couple of years, and because we live on this geological formation called Yazoo clay, there has been some shifting of the foundation and some issues we need to take care of immediately to secure the home and make it shine,” said Bradley, who expects the museum to open Fountainhead for tours sometime in 2027.
Keep up with the progress of the restoration process by subscribing to newsletter updates at msmuseumart.org/exhibition/fountainhead-by-frank-lloyd-wright.
