“The Guggenheim is a building that you cannot experience by sitting in one place”. This is the first sentence that my gaze landed upon from the thousands others that Google displayed on its webpage. I decided to google the Guggenheim before my visit, because I was short on time and I wanted to pin point my favorite exhibitions on the online website, and later visit those select areas in the museum. On the day of the visit, I enjoyed most of the exhibitions and the collections on display, but there was something else that vehemently grabbed by attention throughout this visit. Although this aspect of the museum might not closely relate to our Arts and Seminar class discussions; I was utterly enthralled by the amazing architecture of the Guggenheim. There were countless artistic pieces around me but my attention kept diverting towards the ceiling, the walls and most importantly to the enthralling floor plan of the museum. As a side note, I think I am artistically drawn towards 3-D forms of art. Although I do enjoy all forms of art, nothing grabs my attention as much as a statue or a sculpture, or even the shape of a building. The rotunda of the Guggenheim especially, took my breath away. As I stepped into the rotunda, I felt like someone had taken the walls away from me and opened me into space. I kept gazing up the entire time I was in the rotunda, and actually annoyed a couple of people because I bumped into them so often. The Guggenheim architects were absolute geniuses because they created a very clever floor plan. There is almost no need to carry a map or constantly look for directions; instead you are able to go around smoothly in the spiral and easily access all the places in the museum. Another interesting aspect of the spiral floor plan was that it connected you with the people in the entire museum. You were able to see people on all the floors, and observe what they were looking at. For some reason that gave me a feeling of oneness, as if all the lovers of art have gathered for a brief moment of time and been connected with one another by the museum.

The author of the quote at the top is absolutely correct. You will not have a good experience at the Guggenheim if you stay in one place throughout your visit. You have to move around and you have to experience. I enjoyed all the different forms of art that were displayed, however, the piece that connected with me, the giant piece, was the architecture of the building

Picture: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/2/16/1266326122729/Guggenheim-Museum-001.jpg *I didn’t have a nice picture of the floor plan, that’s why I used one from the Internet*