[4][5] When he left Wright's Taliesin Fellowship in 1935, he joined the family business and became merchandise manager for home furnishings, and in 1938, was elected secretary of the Kaufmann Department Stores, Inc.[6] In 1940, Edgar wrote to Alfred Barr of the Museum of Modern Art, proposing the Organic Design in Home Furnishings Competition, won by Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen.
Afterwards, he was director of the Industrial Design Department at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City.
[1] Kaufmann strongly supported his father's decision to commission Frank Lloyd Wright for the famous 1936 Fallingwater house over Bear Run, in Stewart Township, Pennsylvania.
After his father's death in 1955, Kaufmann inherited the Fallingwater house, continuing to use and share it as a mountain retreat until 1963.
[19] They included Mondrian's Facade in Tan and Grey and Composition in a Square, Klee's Face of a Flower, Picasso's Guitar and Pink Fruit Dish, Braque's Harlequin, a Matisse's Nude With Pink Shoes, Léger's Forms in Contrast and Acrobats, de Kooning's Untitled III, Calder's Little Tree, Monet's Waterlilies, Duchamp's Small Horse, Giacometti's Woman With a Broken Shoulder, and Miró's Bird Flying Toward a Silver Tree.