The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture taps Aaron Betsky as its new dean

The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture has appointed noted architecture critic and museum director Aaron Betsky as its new dean. Betsky, a Yale-trained architect and widely published writer, was most recently director of the Cincinnati Art Museum and previously served as the director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute and as a curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The school, which encourages learning by doing, was founded by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his third wife, Olgivanna, in 1932, at Taliesin, the architect’s studio in Spring Green, Wisconsin. A second facility in Scottsdale, Arizona, known as Taliesin West, followed in 1937, and both campuses remain active today. “I look forward to continuing the tradition of experimental architecture [Wright] did so much to define by helping new generations discover how they can use design to make our world better,” Betsky said in a statement issued by the school.

Betsky joins the institution at a challenging time, after the Higher Learning Commission determined the school could lose its accreditation in 2017, which would prevent it from offering a master's degree in architecture. The school is currently holding a fundraising campaign that would allow it to become an independent subsidiary of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and retain its accreditation.