Hilla Rebay and early years Solomon R. Guggenheim, a member of a wealthy mining family, began collecting works of the
old masters in the 1890s. He retired from his business in 1919 to devote more time to art collecting. In 1926, at age 66, he met artist
Hilla von Rebay, who was commissioned by Guggenheim's wife, Irene Rothschild, to paint his portrait. Rebay introduced him to European
avant-garde art, in particular abstract art that she felt had a spiritual and utopian aspect (
non-objective art). In 1930, the two visited
Wassily Kandinsky's studio in
Dessau, Germany, and Guggenheim began to purchase Kandinsky's work. The same year, Guggenheim began to display the collection to the public at his apartment in the
Plaza Hotel in New York City. Guggenheim's purchases continued with the works of
Rudolf Bauer,
Fernand Léger,
Robert Delaunay, and great artists who were not of the non-objective school, such as
Marc Chagall,
Jean Metzinger,
Albert Gleizes,
Pablo Picasso and
László Moholy-Nagy. In 1937, Guggenheim established the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to foster the appreciation of
modern art. This moved, in 1947, to another rented space at 1071
Fifth Avenue. By the early 1940s, the foundation had accumulated such a large collection of avant-garde paintings that the need for a permanent building to house the art collection had become apparent. In 1943, Guggenheim and Rebay commissioned architect
Frank Lloyd Wright to design the museum building. Rebay conceived of the space as a "temple of the spirit" that would facilitate a new way of looking at the modern pieces in the collection. In 1948, the collection was greatly expanded through the purchase of art dealer Karl Nierendorf's estate of some 730 objects, notably
German expressionist paintings. After Guggenheim's death, members of the Guggenheim family who sat on the foundation's board of directors had personal and philosophical differences with Rebay, and in 1952 she resigned as director of the museum. He also established the
Guggenheim International Awards in 1956. Sweeney oversaw the last half dozen years of the construction of the museum building, during which time he had an antagonistic relationship with Frank Lloyd Wright, especially regarding the building's lighting issues. The distinctive cylindrical building, wider at the top than the bottom, with a spiral ramp climbing gently from ground level to the skylight at the top, turned out to be Wright's last major work, as the architect died six months before its opening. The building opened in October 1959 to large crowds and instantly polarized architecture critics, though today it is widely praised. Some of the criticism focused on the idea that the building overshadows the artworks displayed inside,
Messer and the ramp Thomas M. Messer succeeded Sweeney as director of the museum (but not the foundation) in 1961 and stayed for 27 years, the longest tenure of any of the city's major arts institutions' directors. When Messer took over, the museum's ability to present art at all was still in doubt due to the challenges presented by continuous spiral ramp gallery that is both tilted and has curved walls. Almost immediately, in 1962, he took a risk putting on a large exhibition that combined the Guggenheim's paintings with sculptures on loan from the
Hirshhorn Museum. It turned out that the combination could work well in the Guggenheim's space, but, Messer recalled that at the time, "I was scared. I half felt that this would be my last exhibition." These 73 works include
Impressionist,
Post-Impressionist and French modern masterpieces, including important works by
Paul Gauguin,
Édouard Manet,
Camille Pissarro,
Vincent van Gogh and 32 works by
Pablo Picasso.
Global expansion , in Venice
Peggy Guggenheim, Solomon's niece, collected and displayed art beginning in 1938. At Messer's urging, she donated her art collection and home in Venice, the
Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, to the foundation in 1976. After her death in 1979, the collection of more than 300 works was re-opened to the public as the
Peggy Guggenheim Collection in 1980 by the foundation, which was then under the direction of Peter Lawson-Johnston. It includes early 20th century works of prominent American modernists and Italian
futurists. Pieces in the collection embrace
Cubism,
Surrealism and
Abstract expressionism. Some of the notable artists are Picasso,
Dalí,
Magritte,
Brâncuși (including a sculpture from the
Bird in Space series), eleven works by Pollock,
Braque,
Duchamp,
Léger,
Severini,
Picabia,
de Chirico,
Mondrian, Kandinsky, Miró,
Giacometti, Klee,
Gorky, Calder,
Max Ernst and Peggy Guggenheim's daughter,
Pegeen Vail Guggenheim.
Thomas Krens, director of the foundation from 1988 to 2008, led a rapid expansion of the foundation's collections. In 1991, he broadened the foundation's holdings by acquiring the Panza Collection. Assembled by
Count Giuseppe di Biumo and his wife, Giovanna, the Panza Collection includes examples of
Minimalist sculptures by
Carl Andre,
Dan Flavin and
Donald Judd, and Minimalist paintings by
Robert Mangold,
Brice Marden and
Robert Ryman, as well as an array of
Post-Minimal,
Conceptual, and perceptual art by
Robert Morris,
Richard Serra,
James Turrell,
Lawrence Weiner and others, notably American examples of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1992, the
Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation gifted 200 of his best photographs to the foundation. The works spanned his entire output, from his early collages,
Polaroids, portraits of celebrities, self-portraits, male and female nudes, flowers and statues. It also featured mixed-media constructions and included his well-known 1998
Self-Portrait. The acquisition initiated the foundation's photography exhibition program. The same year, the foundation opened the small Guggenheim Museum SoHo in the
SoHo neighborhood of downtown Manhattan, designed by
Arata Isozaki, and hosted exhibits that included
Marc Chagall and the Jewish Theater,
Paul Klee at the Guggenheim Museum,
Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective, and
Andy Warhol: The Last Supper. This space was kept after the main museum was re-opened, but it closed in 2002 due to an economic downturn. To finance these moves, controversially, the foundation sold works by Kandinsky, Chagall and
Modigliani to raise $47 million, drawing considerable criticism for trading masters for "trendy" latecomers. In
The New York Times, critic
Michael Kimmelman wrote that the sales "stretched the accepted rules of
deaccessioning further than many American institutions have been willing to do." Krens defended the action as consistent with the museum's principles, including expanding its international collection and building its "postwar collection to the strength of our pre-war holdings" The
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened in 1997. Designed by
Frank Gehry, the titanium, glass and limestone Guggenheim Bilbao is a centerpiece of the revitalization of the
Basque city of
Bilbao, Spain. The building was greeted with glowing praise from architecture critics. The Basque government funded the construction, while the Foundation purchased the artworks and manages the facility. Also in 1997, the foundation opened a small gallery in the
Unter den Linden area of Berlin, Germany, as the
Deutsche Guggenheim, in cooperation with the Deutsche Bank. After 14 years of operation, Deutsche Guggenheim closed at the end of 2012.
Krens exhibitions and abortive projects Under Krens, the foundation mounted some of its most popular exhibitions: "Africa: The Art of a Continent" in 1996; "China: 5,000 Years" in 1998, "Brazil: Body & Soul" in 2001; and "The Aztec Empire" in 2004. Unusual exhibitions included
commercial art installations of
Giorgio Armani suits and motorcycles.
The New Criterion's
Hilton Kramer condemned both
The Art of the Motorcycle and the retrospective of the work of fashion designer Armani. Others disagreed. The first and larger of the two hosted one exhibition: "The Art of the Motorcycle", before closing in 2003. The latter held ten exhibitions of masterworks by leading artists from the last six centuries, including
Van Eyck,
Titian,
Velázquez,
Van Gogh,
Picasso,
Pollock and
Lichtenstein. The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum closed in 2008. The same year, the foundation received a gift of the large collection of the Bohen Foundation, which, for two decades, commissioned new works of art with an emphasis on film, video, photography and new media. Artists included in the collection are
Pierre Huyghe,
Sophie Calle and
Jac Leirner. but these plans were disrupted by the economic downturn of the early 2000s and the
September 11, 2001 attacks, which prompted reconsideration of any plans in lower Manhattan. Other projects were considered but not completed in
Rio de Janeiro,
Vilnius,
Salzburg,
Taichung and
Guadalajara On January 19, 2005, the philanthropist
Peter B. Lewis resigned from his position as chairman of the foundation, expressing his opposition to Krens' plans for further global expansion of the Guggenheim museums. Lewis had been the largest donor in the history of the Guggenheim. Tensions continued, however, and on February 27, 2008, Krens resigned from his position at the foundation. He remained, however, as an advisor for international affairs. Over his two decades at the head of the foundation, Krens was criticized not only for the deaccessioning of older works of the museum One writer commented, "Krens has been both praised and vilified for turning what was once a small New York institution into a worldwide brand, creating the first truly multinational arts institution. ... Krens transformed the Guggenheim into one of the best-known brand name in the arts."
Armstrong and later years Richard Armstrong became the fifth director of the foundation on November 4, 2008. He had been director of the
Carnegie Museum of Art in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for 12 years, where he had also served as chief curator and curator of contemporary art. In addition to its permanent collections, which continue to grow, In 2006,
Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, announced an agreement with the Guggenheim Foundation to build a new museum, "
Guggenheim Abu Dhabi". Gehry designed the structure, which will, if completed, be the foundation's largest by far. The completion date has been pushed back repeatedly. The museum is expected to house modern and contemporary collections that will focus on Middle-Eastern contemporary art and to display special exhibitions from the foundation's main collection. The study recommended building the museum in Helsinki's South Harbor. In 2012, the proposal was rejected by the city board, and in 2013, the foundation made a revised proposal. The Guggenheim's licensing fee was to be funded by private sources; one journalist called the Foundation's cost and revenue estimates "speculative at best". An international architecture competition solicited designs for the museum, and in 2015, a design was chosen. Armstrong left the museum at the end of 2023. In June 2024, Mariët Westermann, previously the vice chancellor of
New York University Abu Dhabi, became the Guggenheim's first female director. == Restitution claims ==