If we recently talked about the Mozart museum, today we want to refer to the Guggenheim Museum in New York, which is an architectural masterpiece. In case you didn’t know, there are five Guggenheim museums in the world, but the oldest and best known is undoubtedly the one on Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side of New York, one of the most popular modern art museums in the world!
In this post we want to tell you everything about this museum, so keep on reading!
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum deserves a visit at least to its impressive building, a marvel of architecture. It’s a fast, easy and comfortable museum that hides jewels of art, the first, its unique building built and designed by Frank Lloyd Wright!
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was created in 1937 by Solomon R. Guggenheim, who wanted to preserve and publicly exhibit his non-objective works.
In 1939 the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, as it was originally called, opened its doors in the building he had rented on 24 East 54th Street and there displayed the American and European collection of abstract and non-objective art, which Solomon R. Guggenheim had started collecting a decade earlier.
The need for a permanent building to house the entire Guggenheim collection became urgent in the early 1940s, but it wasn’t until 1943 that renowned American architect Frank Lloyd Wright won the commission to design the New York City branch.
If you have been to other museums in the world, you surely know that it’s difficult to follow the thread, to know where to follow the itinerary and that it’s tremendously easy to get lost! Well, in the Guggenheim museum it’s impossible to happen 😉.
The final Wright design emerged after several conceptual changes and over 200 sketches, so you can get an idea of how complicated it got to be! Wright lived in a suite for five years while it was being built, but unfortunately, he never saw the project completed. In 1959, he died at the age of 89 after undergoing surgery in Arizona.
The building with its spiral ramp, and the exhibition space around it, became an architectural icon.
6 months later the museum was inaugurated with the presence of President Eisenhower and taking advantage of the construction of the building, the museum was renamed in honor of its founder and benefactor Solomon R. Guggenheim.
More than 80 years have passed since the creation of this incredible museum. Its collection has grown exponentially, expanding both historically and in stylistic range and depth.
The Guggenheim New York collection is so extensive that it has allowed its foundation to open new branches in other countries around the world.
We find the one in New York, the one in Venice (one of the most important museums in Europe dedicated to modern art), and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the work of the great architect Frank Gehry.
And the last and most recent is the project of the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. It’s also designed by architect Frank Gehry: the museum wants to contribute to a more inclusive and expansive view of art that emphasizes the convergence of local, regional, and international sources of creative inspiration rather than geography or nationality. A very interesting and revolutionary idea in the art world, right?
The first thing you should know is that the museum doesn’t divide its collection into departments dedicated to certain artists or eras as most museums do. It ends up being boring, right? What they want is to continually improve it with new emerging talents!
Thanks to this, the museum is very easy to see, and you won’t spend more than 2 hours visiting it!
Although initially Solomon R. Guggenheim founded the museum to preserve and exhibit his non-objective works publicly, eventually the museum not only houses his collection but also has added surrealist works and sculptures by his niece Peggy Guggenheim. It can also be seen in other types of styles and impressive works by different artists!
And as we have promised, here are four curiosities that you probably didn’t know about this wonderful place:
What do you think of this museum? If you are an artist or a lover of art, this place is a must, as you will be able to see famous works that will take your breath away, from Daddy, Daddy by Mauricio Cattelan, Black Lines by Wassily Kandinsky, Woman with Yellow Hair by Pablo Picasso, among others!
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