Edgar Kaufmann, jr.
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Edgar Kaufmann, jr. (1910 - July 31, 1989) was the son of Edgar J. Kaufmann, a wealthy Pittsburgh merchant who owned Kaufmann's department store. Edgar, jr. attended the School for Arts and Crafts at the Austrian Museum of Applied Art in Vienna in the late 1920s, studied painting and typography for three years with Victor Hammer in Florence, Italy and was an apprentice architect at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin Foundation from 1933 to 1934. He strongly supported his father's decision to commission Fallingwater by Wright in 1936.
In 1940, Edgar wrote to Alfred Barr of the Museum of Modern Art proposing the Organic Design in Home Furnishings Competition, won by Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen. He served in the US Army Air Force during World War II and joined the Museum of Modern Art in 1946 as director of the industrial design department, a position he held until 1955. Edgar's greatest accomplishment during his tenure was the Good Design program of 1950 to 1955, in which the museum joined forces with the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, promoting good design in household objects and furnishings.
After his father’s death in 1955, Edgar Kaufmann jr. inherited Fallingwater and continued to use it as a mountain retreat until 1963. Then, following his father’s wishes, he entrusted it and several hundred acres of land to Western Pennsylvania Conservancy as a conservation in memory of his parents.
From 1963 to 1986, Edgar was an Adjunct Professor of Architecture and Art History at Columbia University. He authored several books on Wright, architecture, and modern design, and was a contributor to Encyclopedia Britannica. Following his death in 1989, Edgar jr. was entombed alongside the remains of his parents in the family mausoleum on the grounds of Fallingwater.
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