Students Experience Fallingwater Through Internships
Edgar Kaufmann jr. once said of Fallingwater: “… there are many places where conversation, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s work, can be studied; there is nowhere else where his architecture can be felt so warmly, appreciated so intuitively. That is the beginning of wisdom.”
A group of nine students received the opportunity during summer internships not only to study Fallingwater, but also to experience the house, the grounds and the behind-the-scenes work that keeps the site running. The interns – who represented a wide range of educational backgrounds from undergraduates to doctoral students – came from across the country for the opportunity. The interns (pictured above left to right) included:
- • Casey Guise, who had recently completed a Master of Arts at Liberty University, and Arielle Lilley, a graduate of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, worked together as Fallingwater’s social media interns. Through innovative engagement techniques, the two significantly increased the house’s following on Facebook and Twitter.
- • Adam Atkins, a graduate student at Arizona State University, and Lindsay Rappa, an undergraduate at Cornell University, worked together as landscape interns, creating a “wedding garden” at the Barn at Fallingwater and attending to other projects. Funded through the Katherine Mabis McKenna Foundation, their internship allowed Atkins and Rappa to design landscapes near the site’s Bear Run schoolhouse and gardener’s cottage.
- • Education intern Kelsey Stimple divided her time between the Fallingwater’s public tour, residency and education programs. Now a senior at Yale, Stimple rewrote educational materials and organized website information.
- • While interning at Fallingwater’s Museum Store, Amelia Qualters updated the photography on the store’s website, helping to boost online sales by 30 percent. Qualters attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she studied communications media.
- • Last summer, Jamie Edwards worked with the Fallingwater Café chef to offer a new range of pastry items for the café and to support events. Edwards is finishing her Bachelor of Science in Culinary Arts management at the Art Institute of Virginia Beach in Virginia Beach, Va.
- • Preservation intern Larry Frey had just completed his doctoral dissertation at the University of Florida when he came to Fallingwater, where he provided a 25-page action plan summary for the house’s concrete and masonry. During his internship, he also helped to repoint stone terraces and updated a preservation and treatment manual used by Fallingwater staff.
- • Now a graduate student at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, Scott Chamness worked as the house’s collections intern. As the Judy Cheteyan Fallingwater Museum Collections Intern, Chamness organized and maintained Fallingwater’s collection database, entering an additional 3,300 items, such as decorative items and pieces of art.