This program will be held in-person at the Newberry in partnership with the Edith Farnsworth House.
Join us to hear from Nora Wendl, who will discuss her new book, Almost Nothing: Reclaiming Edith Farnsworth, in conversation with journalist and critic Anjulie Rao.
The iconic Edith Farnsworth House is a singular glass home designed by Mies van der Rohe. But the oft-told history of the house overwrites Farnsworth’s role as Mies’s collaborator and antagonist while falsely portraying her as the architect’s angry ex-lover.
Nora Wendl’s audacious work of creative nonfiction explodes the sex-and-real-estate myth surrounding the Edith Farnsworth House and its two central figures. An eminent physician and woman of letters, Farnsworth left a rich trove of correspondence, memoirs, and photographs that Wendl uses to reconstruct her voice. Farnsworth’s memories and experiences alternate with Wendl’s thoughts on topics like misogyny and professional ambition to fashion a lyrical examination of love, loneliness, beauty, and the search for the divine.
Eloquent and confessional, Almost Nothing restores Edith Farnsworth to her place in architectural history and the masterpiece that bears her name.
Copies of Almost Nothing: Reclaiming Edith Farnsworth, published by the University of Illinois Press, will be sold through the Newberry Bookshop and a book signing will be held after the talk.
Cost and Registration
This program is free and open to all. Advance registration required.
Registration opens May 1.
About the Speakers
Nora Wendl is an is an essayist, artist, editor, and associate professor of architecture at the University of New Mexico, where she teaches studio and theory. Wendl’s work, across scales and media, subverts the received narratives that underpin architectural historiography. She engages feminist archival practices to create essays, books, installations, photographs, and films that offer new forms and frameworks for historicizing the built and unbuilt environments. These works have been supported by the Graham Foundation, Santa Fe Art Institute, and National Trust for Historic Preservation, among other institutions. She has exhibited and published widely, and her most recent book, Almost Nothing: Reclaiming Edith Farnsworth (University of Illinois Press, 2025), was shortlisted for the 2022 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. From 2021 – 2024, she was the Executive Editor of the Journal of Architectural Education.
Anjulie Rao is a journalist and critic covering the built environment. Based in Chicago, much of her work reckons with the complexities of post-industrial cities; explores connections to place and land; and exposes intersections between architecture, landscapes, and cultural change. She is the founder and editor of Weathered, a Graham Foundation-awarded publication focused on cities and landscapes in the wintertime.