Summary
Frederick Kiesler worked on a book in the last years of his life. In it, he collected notes, poems and thoughts on art and architecture. He called the book The Endless Search. After his death, it was published under the title Inside the Endless House. The exhibition takes up this idea. It invites visitors on an “endless journey” - through special architectural projects, stage sets, works of art and portraits. Many different objects from the archive are on display. Some of them, such as diaries, models or old glass photographs, have rarely or never been exhibited before.
Exhibition
May 28, 2025 – November 14, 2025
Opening
May 27, 2025, 6:00 pm
Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation
Mariahilfer Straße 1b/Top 1, 1060 Wien
Exhibition of the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation
In the final years of his life, artist-architect Frederick Kiesler worked on a collection of diary-like notes, anecdotes, and travel reports, complemented by poems and reflections on architecture and art. Due to Kiesler’s death in December 1965, the book project remained unfinished and was posthumously published by his widow Lillian Kiesler under the title Inside the Endless House. Art, People and Architecture. A Journal. Kiesler himself had chosen the working title The Endless Search.
The exhibition picks up on these ideas and takes the visitors on an “endless search”—or rather, an endless journey through Kiesler’s architecture and art, as well as to the companions who shaped his artistic network in New York.
Selected projects are presented through exemplary objects—from his most famous works, such as the Endless House, to his stage designs for the Juilliard School of Music, the Galaxy sculptures, and portrait drawings of his friends.
The exhibition also highlights the rich diversity of the Frederick Kiesler Foundation’s archive, encompassing a wide range of media types—including glass plate slides, diaries, small models, drawings, and personal documents, many of which have rarely or never been shown before.
Credits Header:
Friedrich Kiesler, Raumstadt, colored glass plate slide, Paris 1925/New York 1930s © Friedrich Kiesler Foundation