Elmhurst History Museum, 120 E. Park Ave. Elmhurst, USA

Marion Mahony Griffin’s story is now being brought to light with a new exhibition presented by the Elmhurst History Museum entitled In Her Own Right: Marion Mahony Griffin. The exhibition brings Mahony Griffin’s own story out of the shadows as a brilliant architect, talented artist, avid environmentalist, and social activist. In Her Own Right traces Mahony Griffin’s early life, her personal and professional partnership with her husband on three continents, her final years in Chicago where she died in obscurity and penniless, and considers the legacy of a Chicagoan of immense but often overlooked importance, shedding light on the unheralded Prairie School innovator and Illinois’ first woman architect

The Griffins are perhaps better known in Australia than they are in the U.S. due to the years they spent there working on the elaborate Plan for Canberra, an impressive international contest-winning design created for the country’s capital city, and the suburb of Castlecrag, an idyllic community in Sydney that assimilated architecture into the natural landscape. So it is fitting that the Elmhurst History Museum turned to Dr. Anna Rubbo, PhD, an Australian and an adjunct senior scholar at the Center for Sustainable Urban Development at Columbia University and a former Associate Professor of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney, for development of the exhibition content.

Lance Tawzer, Elmhurst History Museum’s curator of exhibits, shared his rationale for telling Marion’s story now explaining that “Anna Rubbo brings a special perspective to this story as a scholar, an architect and an Australian”.

Opening hours: Sunday, Tuesday through Friday from 1 to 5 p.m. and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
For information about exhibit-related programs with visiting scholars, authors and interesting tours visit: www.elmhursthistory.org