The Guggenheim Musem or The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is an art museum located at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street in and area named the Museum Mile, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously expanding collection of:
• Impressionist
• Post-Impressionist
• Early Modern
and
• Contemporary Art
The museum has special exhibitions of many different genres of art, throughout the year.
The Guggenheim was originally established by Solomon R. Guggenheim’s Foundation in 1939 as The Museum of Non-Objective Painting, under the guidance of its first director, the artist Hilla von Rebay. The museum adopted its current name after the death of its founder, Solomon R. Guggenheim, in 1952.
The Wright Building – In 1959, the museum moved from a rented space to its current building, the landmark work of 20th-century architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. The cylindrical, funnel shapped building is wider at the top than the bottom, conceived by Wright as a “temple of the spirit”.
Its unique ramp gallery extends up 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 (when an adjoining tower was built) and again was renovated from 2005 to 2008.
The museum’s collection has grown organically, over the decades, and is founded upon several important private collections, beginning with Solomon Guggenheim’s original personal collection. The collection is shared with the museum’s sister museums in Bilbao, Spain and works on loan to other museums. In 2013, nearly 1.2 million people visited the NYC Guggenheim museum when it hosted the most popular exhibition in New York City that year: Abstracted Forms: The Art of Christopher Wool. The exhibition was devoted to contemporary artist Christopher Wool’s work. In the show, Wool unabashedly asserted his artworks against the pristine, white rotunda of Frank Lloyd Wright’s mid-century interiors with his graphic, high-contrast black and white paintings, which state, in no unapparent terms: “hypocrite” “absurdist” “mercenary” and – most beloved piece of the exhibition – “if you can’t take a joke you can get the f___ out of my house.”
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was founded in 1937, and its first New York-based venue, The Museum of Non-Objective Painting, opened in 1939. With exhibitions of Solomon Guggenheim’s somewhat eccentric art collection, with great works by Vasily Kandinsky, as well as works by his followers, including Rudolf Bauer, Alice Mason, Otto Nebel, and Rolph Scarlett. The need for a permanent building to house Guggenheim’s art collection became evident in the early 1940s, and in 1943 renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright gained the commission to design the museum in New York City. The Guggenheim (The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum) opened on October 21, 1959.
The Guggenheim’s Timeline
1929
Solomon R. Guggenheim establishes his modern art collection
At age 66, the wealthy American industrialist Solomon R. Guggenheim begins to form a large collection of important modern paintings by artists such as Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Marc Chagall. He is guided in this pursuit by a German artist and theorist, Baroness Hilla Rebay von Ehrenwiesen. Rebay introduces Guggenheim to Kandinsky in his Dessau studio and Guggenheim purchases several paintings and works on paper. He eventually acquires more than 150 works by this seminal artist, as well as paintings by Rudolf Bauer, Robert Delaunay, and László Moholy-Nagy.
1930s
Solomon R. Guggenheim’s first public exhibitions are held at the Plaza Hotel
Solomon R. Guggenheim’s growing collection is installed in his private apartment at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Small exhibitions of newly acquired works are held there intermittently for the public. Hilla Rebay organizes a landmark loan exhibition entitled Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection of Non-Objective Paintings, which travels to Charleston, South Carolina; Philadelphia; and Baltimore.
1937
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is formed
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is formed for the “promotion and encouragement and education in art and the enlightenment of the public.” Chartered by the Board of Regents of New York State, the foundation is endowed to operate one or more museums. Solomon Guggenheim is elected the first president of the foundation, and Hilla Rebay is appointed its trustee and curator. Approximately 600 artworks that comprise the Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection are given to the museum by Solomon R. Guggenheim between 1937 and 1949 or purchased by the foundation.
1938
Peggy Guggenheim opens the Guggenheim Jeune gallery in London
At age forty, Peggy Guggenheim, Solomon R. Guggenheim’s niece, opens Guggenheim Jeune, a commercial art gallery in London representing such avant-garde artists as Jean Cocteau, Vasily Kandinsky, and Yves Tanguy. Initially advised by Herbert Read and Marcel Duchamp, she soon begins to amass her own important collection of Surrealist and abstract art.
1939
The Museum of Non-Objective Painting opens in New York City
Under the auspices of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the Museum of Non-Objective Painting opens in rented quarters at 24 East 54th Street in order to exhibit Solomon’s collection. William Muschenheim designs the unusual gallery—decorated with pleated gray velour on the walls and thick gray carpet, and featuring recorded classical music and incense—in a former automobile showroom. Under Hilla Rebay’s direction, the museum showcases the work of American and European abstract artists such as Rudolf Bauer and Vasily Kandinsky.
1942
Peggy Guggenheim opens Art of This Century gallery in New York City
Peggy Guggenheim opens Art of This Century, a unique gallery-museum on 57th Street in New York, designed by Frederick Kiesler. The inaugural installation features her own collection displayed in unconventional ways. Over the next five years, Peggy provides critical support to the nascent American school of Abstract Expressionism and mounts important exhibitions devoted to European and American artists such as Giorgio de Chirico, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko.
1943
Frank Lloyd Wright is commissioned to design a permanent museum
Solomon and Rebay commission Frank Lloyd Wright to design a permanent structure to house the Museum of Non-Objective Painting. Over the next 16 years, Wright will make some 700 sketches and 6 separate sets of working drawings for the building. The foundation acquires a tract of land between East 88th and 89th Streets on Fifth Avenue, but construction is delayed until 1956 for various reasons, foremost among them the death of Solomon R. Guggenheim in 1949 and postwar inflation.
1948
Solomon R. Guggenheim’s collection moves to a townhouse museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim’s collection moves to a remodeled townhouse formerly housing the Gardner School for Girls at the current site of 1071 Fifth Avenue. The Museum of Non-Objective Painting is renamed the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1952.
1948–1949
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation acquires the Karl Nierendorf estate
The Guggenheim Foundation’s collection expands by some 730 objects with the purchase of the entire estate of New York art dealer Karl Nierendorf (1889–1947). The acquisition expands the breadth of the Guggenheim collection with a large concentration of works by Paul Klee—more than 50 paintings and works on paper, including Red Balloon—and with the addition of important German and Austrian Expressionist works, such as Oskar Kokoschka’s Knight Errant, and Surrealist paintings such as Joan Miró’s Personage.
1949
Peggy Guggenheim moves to the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni in Venice
One year after Peggy exhibits her now fabled collection of Cubist, Surrealist, and European abstract painting and sculpture at the 1948 Venice Biennale, she purchases the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on Venice’s Grand Canal. Designed in the 18th century by Lorenzo Boschetti, the palazzo was originally envisioned as an ornate, five-story structure, but after construction began in the 1750s, only one floor was completed. Peggy Guggenheim opens her collection to the public in 1949 with an exhibition of sculptures in the palazzo garden.
1952
James Johnson Sweeney succeeds Hilla Rebay as director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Hilla Rebay resigns and is replaced as director by James Johnson Sweeney. The name of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting is changed to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum to distinguish it as a memorial to its founder, who died in 1949, and to signify a shift toward a broader view of modern and contemporary art. Under Sweeney, the Guggenheim purchases several sculptures by Constantin Brancusi and other important artists whose work does not fall within the category of non-objective art.
1953
The Usonian House and pavilion are constructed
In conjunction with a traveling exhibition entitled Sixty Years of Living Architecture: The Work of Frank Lloyd Wright, Wright’s model Usonian house and a pavilion with a pitched roof are constructed on the vacant lots that will become the site of the current Guggenheim building. After strolling the adjacent pavilion, where models and large photographs of Wright’s architecture are on display, visitors enter the Usonian house and find furniture designed by Wright, a kitchen complete with dishes, and artwork and home goods installed throughout seven rooms. The model house, on display at the museum site from October 22 to December 13, 1953, is one of more than one hundred Usonian houses built in the United States between 1934 and 1964, to exhibit Wright’s vision for middle-class American home life.
1953
Construction of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum begins
Ground is broken for the museum, renamed in Solomon R. Guggenheim’s memory, in August. Architect William H. Short is named Clerk of the Works, overseeing the project and taking photos as the building takes shape. Solomon’s art collection is temporarily moved to a townhouse at 7 East 72nd Street.
1959
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opens in New York City
The museum opens to an enthusiastic public on October 21, just six months after Frank Lloyd Wright’s death. The spiral design with continuous spaces flowing freely one into another dispenses with the conventional approach to museum design, and the open rotunda affords viewers the unique possibility of seeing several areas of work on different levels simultaneously. From the beginning, the relationship between the breathtaking architecture of the building and the art it was built to display inspires controversy and debate. One critic writes that the museum “has turned out to be the most beautiful building in America . . . never for a minute dominating the pictures being shown,” while another insists that the structure is “less a museum than it is a monument to Frank Lloyd Wright.”
1961
Thomas M. Messer is appointed the director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
One year after the resignation of James Johnson Sweeney, Thomas M. Messer is appointed as director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Messer serves as director of the museum from 1961 to 1988, and as director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation from 1980 to 1988. During his tenure, he greatly expands the collection and establishes the Guggenheim Museum as a world-class institution in the realms of art scholarship and special exhibitions.
1963
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation acquires works from Justin K. Thannhauser’s collection
Thomas M. Messer, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, acquires a large group of works from art dealer Justin K. Thannhauser’s private collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and modern French masterpieces, including important works by Paul Gauguin, Édouard Manet, and Vincent van Gogh. Over the years, Thannhauser and his wife, Hilde, will give the Guggenheim more than seventy works, including thirty-four by Pablo Picasso alone. This donation greatly enlarges the scope of the collection to include a painting of the 19th century, beginning with Camille Pissarro’s The Hermitage at Pontoise. Visitors to the museum today can see much of the collection in the Thannhauser Gallery.
1976
Peggy Guggenheim donates her collection to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
Peggy Guggenheim transfers ownership of her collection to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation with the understanding that the works of art will remain in Venice. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection includes masterpieces by Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and Picasso, a rare Kazimir Malevich Suprematist painting, and 11 works by Jackson Pollock.
1979
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation begins overseeing the Venice palazzo
Peggy dies in 1979, and the foundation takes possession of the palazzo, which she had donated to the foundation in 1970. Thomas M. Messer is appointed the director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in addition to his role overseeing the New York museum. He also supervises a major effort to conserve and document the Venice holdings.
1980
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection opens to the public in Venice
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection opens to the public year-round for the first time, and mounts its first temporary exhibitions. Over the next few years, all of the rooms on the main floor of the palazzo are converted into galleries; the white Istrian stone facade and its unique canal terrace are restored; the barchessa is rebuilt and enclosed; and the garden is landscaped by the Venetian architect Giorgio Bellavitis.
1985
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation begins overseeing the Venice Biennale
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is contracted by United States Information Agency (Washington, D.C.) to operate and maintain the U.S. Pavilion of the Venice Biennale. The following year the foundation purchases this building from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, with funds provided by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection Advisory Board. Today, the pavilion is still owned by the foundation.
1988
Thomas Krens becomes director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
Thomas Krens succeeds Thomas M. Messer as director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Krens takes up an expansion program already underway for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York—which will include a tower designed by Gwathmey Siegel and Associates Architects, LLC—and initiates planning for a comprehensive restoration of the Frank Lloyd Wright building.
1990
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum acquires the Panza Collection
From 1990 through 1992 the museum acquires, both through purchases and gifts, more than 350 works of Minimalist, Post-Minimalist, and Conceptual art from the renowned collection of Giuseppe Panza di Biumo. Widely acknowledged as one of the most important single concentrations of American art of the 1960s and 1970s, the Panza Collection dramatically enlarges the foundation’s permanent collection, giving it depth and quality in postwar art, with works by American masters Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Robert Ryman, Richard Serra, and James Turrell, among others.
1990
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum restoration begins
The Frank Lloyd Wright building is closed to the public so that the restoration and expansion can begin. Over the next two years, masterpieces from the collection are exhibited in an international tour that visits Venice, Madrid, Tokyo, Australia, and Montreal.
1991
Agreement is signed for a Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain
Agreements are signed between the Basque Administration and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to create a Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. The Basque Administration will fully fund the $100 million construction and will make annual contributions to the operating budget. The foundation will provide curatorial and administrative expertise as well as the core art collection and programming. Frank Gehry is chosen as the architect of the museum. In 1994 the management agreement for the new museum is signed.
1992
The renovated Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum reopens
After a three-year restoration of its interior, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum reopens to great acclaim. An eight-story tower, designed by Gwathmey Siegel and Associates Architects, LLC opens simultaneously. Frank Lloyd Wright’s original plans for the museum called for a ten-story tower behind the smaller rotunda, to house galleries, offices, workrooms, storage, and private studio apartments. Largely for financial reasons, Wright’s proposed tower went unrealized. Gwathmey Siegel & Associates’ plan incorporates the foundation and framing of a smaller 1968 annex designed by Wright’s son-in-law, William Wesley Peters. The restoration opens the entire Wright building to the public for the first time, converting spaces that had been used for storage and offices into galleries. The restoration and expansion provides over 51,000 square feet of new and renovated gallery space, 1,400 square feet of new office space, a restored restaurant, and retrofitted support and storage spaces. Gwathmey Siegel & Associates’ subtle intervention greatly improves the exhibition capabilities of the museum without detracting from Wright’s original design.
1992
The Guggenheim Museum SoHo opens
The Guggenheim Museum SoHo, designed by Arata Isozaki, features approximately 50,000 square feet of galleries, public areas, retail space, and administrative offices, enabling the Guggenheim Foundation to show more art from its collection and expand its overall programming. Before closing in December 2001, the galleries host many small but important exhibitions focusing on such artists as Max Beckmann, Marc Chagall, and Antoni Tàpies, as well as on art created in new media.
1996
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and HUGO BOSS establish the Hugo Boss Prize
The Hugo Boss Prize is established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and HUGO BOSS to “embrace today’s most innovative and critically relevant cultural currents,” according to Thomas Krens, then the foundation’s director. Awarded biennially, it is offered to artists without limitations on age, medium, or nationality. A jury chooses about six finalists and the winner receives a prize that today stands at $100,000.
1997
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opens
Instantly hailed as an architectural masterpiece, Frank Gehry’s titanium and steel structure becomes the first work of museum architecture to rival the Guggenheim’s Frank Lloyd Wright building in its achievement and influence. The New York Times calls it “the most important building yet completed” by Gehry. His use of cutting-edge computer-aided design technology enables an architecture that is sculptural and expressionistic, with spaces unlike any others for the presentation of art. The museum is seamlessly integrated into the urban context, unfolding its interconnecting shapes of stone, glass, and titanium on a 350,000-square-foot site along the Nervión River in the old industrial heart of Bilbao. The exhibition space is distributed over nineteen galleries, ten of which have a classic orthogonal plan and can be identified from the exterior by their stone finishes. Nine other irregularly shaped galleries present a remarkable contrast and can be identified from the outside by their swirling forms and titanium cladding.
Guided by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the Bilbao museum forms an important collection of postwar American and European painting and sculpture that complements the foundation’s holdings in New York and Venice. The exhibition program includes exhibitions that originate at the New York Guggenheim, as well as at other internationally prominent museums.
1997
The Deutsche Guggenheim opens in Berlin
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Deutsche Bank form a unique partnership to open the Richard Gluckman-designed Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin on Unter Den Linden. Each year the museum mounts one show from Deutsche Bank’s extensive art collection and three Guggenheim-organized exhibitions drawn from both the foundation’s collection and international loans. The Deutsche Guggenheim’s commissions charge contemporary artists—including William Kentridge, Jeff Koons, James Rosenquist, Phoebe Washburn, and Rachel Whiteread—with creating artworks or series that then debut in exhibitions organized in collaboration with Guggenheim Museum curators. When the Deutsche Guggenheim comes to a close in 2013, it reinvents itself as Deutsche Bank KunstHalle. Deutsche Bank and the Guggenheim continue to maintain a valued relationship and deep interest in Berlin as a site of artistic and intellectual activity.
2000
Philip Rylands becomes director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Rylands is promoted from deputy director to director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. During Rylands’s overall tenure, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection sees a renovation of the 18th-century palazzo, the development of an annual exhibition program, an internship program, and the Guggenheim U.K. Charitable Trust. In 2009 Rylands also becomes the Guggenheim Foundation’s director for Italy.
2001
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation forms alliances with the State Hermitage Museum and the Kunsthistorisches Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation signs an alliance agreement with the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, which becomes a trilateral alliance in early 2001 when these institutions are joined by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The objectives of the alliance are to expand international cultural relations; to make each museum’s collections accessible to broader audiences; to pursue collection sharing strategies that complement each institution’s holdings; to implement joint exhibition, publishing, educational, and retail initiatives; and to facilitate each institution’s long-term goals.
2001
The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum and the Guggenheim Las Vegas open
The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum and Guggenheim Las Vegas open at the Venetian Resort, Las Vegas. The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum presents exhibitions drawn from the collections of the Guggenheim and the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, while the Guggenheim Las Vegas hosts special exhibitions. Despite attracting more than a million visitors, the Guggenheim Las Vegas closes in 2003. The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum closes in 2008.
2005
Richard Serra makes history with an installation at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Richard Serra’s monumental site-specific installation The Matter of Time (2005) opens at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. The largest sculpture commission in history, it is hailed by critics as a singular achievement.
2005
Exterior restoration of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum begins
Restoration of the exterior of the Frank Lloyd Wright building begins. Although the museum is in sound structural condition, the building requires exterior work to infill cracks, expose and treat corroding steel, repair and protect all of the concrete work, and perform some structural interventions on the 6th-floor rotunda walls. The restoration is scheduled to be finished in time for the 50th anniversary of the museum’s opening in 2009.
2006
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Launches the Asian Art Initiative
The Guggenheim Museum becomes the first modern art museum in the West to hire a senior curator of Asian art. Subsequently, it also develops the Asian Art Initiative. Both projects are aimed at promoting a transnational understanding of Asian art history. The Asian Art Council, comprised of artists, academics, critics, and curators, guides the initiative’s development in an international context.
2006
Guggenheim hires senior curator of Asian Art
The Guggenheim Museum becomes the first modern art museum in the West to hire a senior curator of Asian art—Alexandra Munroe, Ph.D., currently the Samsung Senior Curator, Asian Art and Senior Advisor, Global Arts at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation. With the inclusion of Munroe, the museum cements its commitment to integrate the study, research, and presentation of Asian art into its exhibition, education, and acquisitions strategies.
2007
Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is established
In 2006, Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, signs a Memorandum of Understanding with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to establish a world-class museum devoted to modern and contemporary art. The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum, to be designed by Frank Gehry, will be built in the Cultural District of Saadiyat Island. The museum will form its own major collection of contemporary art and will also exhibit masterworks from the Guggenheim Foundation’s global collections. The following year, officials representing the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation provide details of the operating framework for the new Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.
2008
Thomas Krens steps down as director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
To assume a leadership role in developing the new Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Thomas Krens steps down as director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Krens’s twenty years heading the foundation are regarded as an active, transformative period, with his role spanning every facet of the institution, as chief executive, curator, visionary, fundraiser, and entrepreneur. Marc Steglitz, chief operating officer of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, is appointed interim director of the foundation.
2008
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum celebrates the completed renovation of the Frank Lloyd Wright building
After more than three years of significant restoration work, thanks to Peter B. Lewis, former Chairman of the Board of Trustees, the City of New York, the State of New York, and other donors, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum sheds its scaffolding to reveal a restored facade and interior improvements. In celebration of the restoration, the foundation commissions artist Jenny Holzer to create a site-specific light projection for the facade of the Guggenheim entitled For the Guggenheim.
2008
Richard Armstrong named director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation
Richard Armstrong, former director of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, is appointed as director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation. As head of the Guggenheim’s executive staff, he focuses on the pivotal role of the New York museum and its collection while also providing leadership and management for the other institutions in the global Guggenheim museum network and for the foundation’s international programs.
2009
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum celebrates its 50th anniversary
The Guggenheim museum celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the opening of the Frank Lloyd Wright building. To mark the occasion, the museum presents a series of special exhibitions and produces publications and an online chronology about the creation of the building.
2010
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation collaborates with YouTube for a juried exhibition of videos
The Guggenheim museum and YouTube, in collaboration with HP and Intel, launches YouTube: Play. Curators vet more than 23,000 submissions to the exhibition, compiling a shortlist of 125 from which a jury picks 25. The videos and artists are celebrated at an event at the Guggenheim in New York on October 21, 2010, and the works are shown at the Guggenheim Museums in New York, Bilbao, Berlin, and Venice from October 22 to 24, 2010.
2011
BMW Guggenheim Lab launches
The BMW Guggenheim Lab is a global project combining think tank, community center, and public meeting space. A co-initiative of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the BMW Group, it is aimed at promoting conversation around issues of contemporary urbanism in cities around the world. Between 2011 and 2013, this interdisciplinary mobile laboratory visited Berlin, Mumbai, and New York.
2012
Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative launches
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and UBS announce the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, a distinctive program that creates direct access to contemporary art and education on a global scale. Through in-depth collaboration with artists, curators, and cultural organizations from South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa, MAP has expanded the Guggenheim’s collection with more than 125 new works, and has built physical and digital experiences that bring art and ideas to life.
2013
The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative launches
The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative established to support a curatorial residency, three exhibitions and publications, and commission-based acquisitions. Designed as a dynamic collaboration between artists, curators, and educators, the initiative actively participates in the creation of contemporary art and critical discourse. By presenting new commissioned works by artists born in Greater China, the program provides an international platform for artistic experimentation and encourages the public to question assumptions about the region.
2014
The Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition launches
After an 11-member jury selects 6 finalists, concept designs are presented in Guggenheim Helsinki Now: Six Finalist Designs Unveiled, a public exhibition at the Kunsthalle Helsinki in Finland, from April 25 through May 16, 2015. On June 23, the winning design, “Art in the City” by Paris firm Moreau Kusunoki Architects, is announced.
2015
Moreau Kusunoki Architectes win Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition
After an 11-member jury selects 6 finalists, the concept designs are presented in Guggenheim Helsinki Now: Six Finalist Designs Unveiled, a public exhibition at the Kunsthalle Helsinki in Finland from April 25 through May 16, 2015. On June 23, the winning design, “Art in the City” by Paris firm Moreau Kusunoki Architects, is announced. The Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition remains the largest design competition of its kind with 1,715 submissions from 77 countries.
2016
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Launches Guggenheim Social Practice
In 2016, with support from the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation, the Guggenheim launches an initiative to explore collaborative projects with artists that foster public and community engagement. Guggenheim Social Practice artists are selected based on their ability to connect creatively with the general public. Documentation of the project will be disseminated through public programs, the website, and a publication.
2020
Diversity, Equity, Access, and Inclusion (DEAI)
The leadership and staff of the Guggenheim are dedicated to building a diverse and equitable institution. We are taking steps toward sustainable change in our professional practices to enact these values in our workplace culture, exhibitions, collection development, research, and publishing; and public and educational programs.
2021
Summer Studio Online
This summer, live virtual art-making classes will be held for students ages 5 to 12. Process-oriented projects get kids making their own art – at home!
