The institutions will share equally in stewardship of the collection. The models will live at MoMA, which has extensive conservation and exhibition experience. The museum will display them in periodic presentations and special exhibitions. The papers will be housed at Avery, whose librarians will make them available to researchers and educators starting at the end of next year.

The partnership “becomes a model for us for how we might approach future projects,” said Glenn D. Lowry, MoMA’s director. “We have avoided collecting archives in the past simply because we didn’t have the resources, either physical or financial, to manage them on our own.”

Because there are several hundred Wright buildings worldwide, MoMA often fields calls from homeowners about his original plans — information that Avery can now more easily provide. “It would be nice to not be answering the telephone from the owner of the Frank Lloyd Wright house from 1922 in Madison, Wis.,” said Barry Bergdoll, chief curator of architecture and design at MoMA.

For the archive’s current caretaker, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, it was not an easy decision to part with all of the artifacts. But after two years of weighing options — like whether to start a fund-raising campaign to build new storage buildings — the foundation decided to partner with other institutions.