Guggenheim, Solomon R.

Guggenheim, Solomon R. (1861–1949). American industrialist, collector, and philanthropist, a member of a famous family of financiers whose fortunes were based on the mining and smelting of metals. Like other members of the family, he devoted much of his vast wealth to philanthropy and in 1937 he founded the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation ‘for the promotion and encouragement of art and education in art'. He started to collect art seriously soon after the turn of the century, and in the later 1920s he began to focus his attention on abstract painting, influenced by his friend Baroness Hilla Rebay von Ehrenweisen (1890–1967), herself an avant-garde artist. In 1939 the collection was first opened to the public in a gallery at 24 East 54th Street, New York, with the Baroness as director. It was called the Museum of Non-Objective Painting. In 1943 Guggenheim commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design a museum to house the collection and it was opened in 1959, a decade after the founder's death. The name had been changed to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1952, this more neutral title reflecting the broadening scope of the collection, which had grown to include sculpture as well as painting and many types of avant-garde art other than abstraction. It ranges from late 19th century to contemporary art and includes examples by virtually all the major avant-garde artists of the time. Its chief glories include the world's largest collection of Kandinsky's work. The museum is famous for its architecture as well as for its contents. The building—the last great work of America's most illustrious architect—marks a complete departure from traditional museum design, the exhibition space being a continuous spiral ramp, six ‘storeys’ high, encircling an open central space. It is architecturally exhilarating, but its suitability for displaying paintings and sculpture has been much questioned; some people think that the building upstages the exhibits.

Guggenheim's niece, Peggy Guggenheim (1898–1979), was a patron, collector, and dealer who played an important role in promoting avant-garde art, in particular by helping to introduce Surrealism to the USA and by furthering the careers of many leading Abstract Expressionists. Her father, Benjamin Guggenheim, died when the Titanic sank in 1912, leaving her a substantial inheritance (although she was not as rich as some people assumed). She moved to London in her early 20s, living mainly in Paris, and in 1938 opened a gallery in London, Guggenheim Jeune, at which she organized exhibitions of abstract and Surrealist art. In 1941 she left war-torn Europe for the USA and in 1942 opened a gallery entitled Art of This Century in New York. She attended the opening ‘wearing a tiny pink landscape by Yves Tanguy on one ear-lobe and a metal and wire mobile by Alexander Calder on the other in an attempt to demonstrate equal respect for Surrealist and abstract art. The gallery was both an exhibition space for young artists and a place to display Guggenheim's growing private collection … Guggenheim's frenzied whirl of parties and openings set the New York art world spinning, offering young American artists the chance to associate with the European avant-garde. Her support of Pollock and encouragement of Robert Motherwell, Hans Hofmann, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb made her the chief patron of the New York School in its infancy’ (catalogue of the exhibition ‘American Art in the 20th Century', Royal Academy, London, 1993). Guggenheim had affairs with several artists and was briefly married to Max Ernst. In 1947 she closed Art of This Century and returned to Europe, settling in Venice, where she founded another gallery. Her own superb collection is open to the public in Venice under the administration of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

In 1997 a new Guggenheim Museum opened in Bilbao, Spain, financed by the Basque regional government. Designed by the American architect Frank Gehry (1929– ), it is one of the most spectacular museum buildings in the world—huge, eccentric in shape, and clad largely in titanium; writing in the Observer, Robert McCrum described it as ‘half Martian space-craft, half Californian Bacofoil fantasy'. It is intended particularly for the display of contemporary works that are too large to be shown in the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and one of its rooms is the biggest single gallery space in the world—more than 100 metres long. Several artists have been commissioned to produce work for this space, including Richard Serra (a friend of the architect's), who created The Snake, a massive piece in rolled steel, with sinuous curves echoing the forms of the building. Gehry had previously done other notable museum work, for example at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.