Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiralling landmark, devoted to modern and contemporary art.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum grew out of the collection of the mining magnate Solomon R. Guggenheim and the artist Hilla Rebay, who championed non-objective painting. The foundation first displayed the collection in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting in rented premises on East 54th Street. In 1943 Frank Lloyd Wright was commissioned to design a permanent building, and after more than fifteen years of planning and construction the museum opened on Fifth Avenue, facing Central Park, in October 1959.
Wright's building is one of the best-known works of twentieth-century architecture. Its white, inverted spiral of reinforced concrete widens as it rises, and inside a continuous ramp winds around a central rotunda beneath a large glass skylight, so that visitors view art along a single gently sloping path. Wright died six months before the opening. A rectangular tower designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates was added in 1992, and the building was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019.
The collection covers modern and contemporary art, with holdings of Vasily Kandinsky and early abstraction, the Thannhauser Collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and early modern works, and later painting, sculpture, photography and media art. The rotunda is used for large temporary exhibitions, while the tower galleries show collection displays. The museum is the flagship of the Guggenheim network, which also includes the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and it hosts the Works & Process performing arts series.
Highlights
- Frank Lloyd Wright's spiral rotunda with a continuous ramp under a glass skylight
- UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the Wright group of buildings (2019)
- Thannhauser Collection with works by Manet, Degas, Van Gogh and Picasso
- Extensive holdings of paintings by Vasily Kandinsky
- Works & Process performances in the Peter B. Lewis Theater
