PRESENTATION OUTLINE
Introduction and history
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim. 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. The museum was established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting. It adopted its current name after the death of its founder, Solomon R. Guggenheim, in 1952.
Architecture
In 1959, the museum moved from rented space to its current building, a landmark work of 20th-century architecture. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the cylindrical building, wider at the top than the bottom, was conceived as a "temple of the spirit". Its unique ramp gallery extends up from ground level in a long, continuous spiral along the outer edges of the building to end just under the ceiling skylight. The building underwent extensive expansion and renovations in 1992 and from 2005 to 2008.
The Museum of Non-Objective Painting
The foundation's first venue for the display of art, the "Museum of Non-Objective Painting".Under Rebay's guidance, Guggenheim sought to include in the collection the most important examples of non-objective art available at the time by early modernists such as Rudolf Bauer, Rebay, Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Marc Chagall, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Amedeo Modigliani and Pablo Picasso.
Theo van Doesburg, 1918, Composition XI
