Interesting facts about the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

solomon r guggenheim museum

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum New York City.

The museum located at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan.

It adopted its current name after the death of its founder, Solomon R. Guggenheim, in 1952.

Completely contrasting the strict Manhattan city grid, the organic curves of The Guggenheim are a familiar landmark for both art lovers, visitors, and pedestrians alike.

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The Guggenheim one of the firm’s most celebrated and critically acclaimed works. It contains 4,740 square meters (51,000 square feet) of new and renovated gallery space, 1,400-square-meter (15,000-square-feet) of new office space, a restored theater, new restaurant and retrofitted support and storage spaces.

The museum was the last major project designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright between 1943 until it opened to the public in 1959, six months after his death, making it one of his longest works in creation along with one of his most popular projects.

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The exhibition space of the interior consists of a spiral ramp of six “stories” encircling an open center space lighted by a dome of glass supported by stainless steel.

The museum’s collection has grown organically, over eight decades, and is founded upon several important private collections, beginning with Solomon R. Guggenheim’s original collection.

It is the permanent home of a continuously expanding collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year.

solomon r guggenheim museum interior

The Guggenheim Museum has a comprehensive collection of European painting throughout the 20th century and of American painting from the second half of the century. The collection has grown organically, over eight decades, and is founded upon several important private collections, beginning with Solomon R. Guggenheim’s original collection.

The museum has the world’s largest collection of paintings by Wassily Kandinsky and rich holdings of works by Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, and Joan Miró, among others. Modern sculpture is also well represented.

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Solomon R. Guggenheim (1861–1949), with the guidance of the German artist Hilla Rebay (1890–1967), was a champion of a particular strand of abstraction known as nonobjective art, which attempted to sever ties to the observable world and aspired to spiritual and utopian goals.

The Guggenheim building underwent extensive expansion and renovations in 1992 (when an adjoining tower was built) and from 2005 to 2008.

In 2018, nearly 1.3 million people visited the museum, and it hosted the most popular exhibition in New York City.

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened in 1997 in the city of Bilbao as a cooperative venture between the Guggenheim Foundation and the Basque regional administration of northwestern Spain.