Michelle Chan, Noah Lindenfeld, Joana Mavromatis
[oral presentation: B+ . published form: A- –JMS]
The Guggenheims were a wealthy Jewish Swiss-German family which made its money from the copper mining industry. The family was friends with other notable New York Jewish families such as the Lehmans, the Goldmans, and the Sachs, but was often subject to anti-Semitism and hostility by the other New York elite families.
Solomon R. Guggenheim met Baroness Hilla Rebay in New York in 1927. She was an abstract painter who had come to New York to present her work. Guggenheim was impressed with her work and asked her to paint portrait of him. Rebay declined, as she did not enjoy painting realistic portraits anymore and instead enjoyed the abstract art form. He responded, “No, it’s probably because you don’t know how to do a portrait anymore!” She took the bait and made him the painting.
In 1929, Solomon R. Guggenheim, with the help of his art advisor, Hilla Rebay, began collecting nonobjective art, which is an art form in which the spectator cannot recognize the subject of the painting. At first Guggenheim presented his work in his apartment, but as his collection grew he established the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1937 “for the promotion and encouragement of art and education in art.” Guggenheim rented spacious quarters at 24 East 54th Street and opened the Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection of Non-Objective Painting.
In 1943, Rebay wrote a letter to the architect Frank Lloyd Wright asking him to design a new museum for the Solomon R. Guggenheim’s Collection of Non-Objective Art. “I want a temple of spirit, a monument!” she wrote. Wright agreed, and so began the 17-year saga of the building of the Guggenheim Museum.
That same year Wright and Guggenheim signed a contract and soon after, a site for the museum was selected. It was located on the southeast corner of 5th Avenue and 89th Street. Wright experimented with the idea of constructing a spiral building. His early sketches reveal his interest in utilizing a ramp on which to exhibit the art. He planned the ceilings to be lower than those of other museums in order to create a more intimate environment.
Wright, Rebay, and Guggenheim
By the end of 1945, the model was complete. However, Hilla Rebay was concerned that the architecture would dominate the paintings. This led Rebay to question Wright about his plans and designs for the museum. Before construction even began, Solomon Guggenheim died at the age of 88. In 1950, Harry S. Guggenheim, Solomon’s nephew, was made president of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, and in the same year construction finally began. The building was opened to the public on October 21, 1959 but unfortunately Frank Lloyd Wright wouldn’t see the completed museum either as he died only months earlier.
The museum’s objectives are outlined in its mission statement: “To promote the understanding and appreciation of art, architecture, and other manifestations of visual culture, primarily of the modern and contemporary periods, and to collect, conserve, and study the art of our time.” The museum serves as a valuable forum for the display of primarily Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, Early Modern, and Contemporary art today.
During our visit to the Guggenheim we noticed that many of the visitors spoke in foreign tongues and we assumed they were tourists. We did not see any children and there were a few seniors. With the exception of us, the majority of the visitors were 20 to 50 years old. The visitors moved in small groups, some led by a guide, from one set of paintings to another. The patrons of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum were all sophisticated and serious about the artwork and kept good distances from the paintings.
The main exhibit is “Kandinsky” and features many of Wassilly Kandinsky’s works of art from 1907 to 1942. The exhibit’s goal is to showcase Kandinsky’s masterpieces and document his life for the visitors. It provided an educational experience because the complimentary audiotapes allowed viewers to analyze the abstract paintings with relative ease. Furthermore, paragraphs with large size text were on the walls and provided an accessible, easy to read, description of Kandinsky’s life.
Similar to the Rubin Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum is very noisy and loud, largely because of the museum’s atrium and open structure. The spiraling tiers of the museum made it difficult for visitors to know when they entered new levels and this provided a seamless, uninterrupted experience of Kandinsky’s artwork and life. There are floor-to-ceiling dividers between pair or groups of three works, which serve to pace visitors and allow them to fully concentrate on a single or small sets of artworks rather than seeing them all at once and making them feel overwhelmed. There is a lot of white space, as each piece was carefully spaced out. The museum did not give off a very cluttered and chaotic impression, which is in sharp contrast to Kandinsky’s abstract art style. There are security guards throughout the museum and they observe every floor but are largely inconspicuous.
The permanent collection halls branch out from the main exhibition and this allows visitors to focus on either the main exhibit or on a very different genre of artwork. The permanent collection is considered by the Guggenheim Foundation to be the “very core of the institution.” It includes various private collections that were either donated to or bought by the museum. The permanent collection was initially set up to display Solomon R. Guggenheim’s collection of non-objective art. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection includes non-objective art pieces, and the Thannhauser Collection contains Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works. During our visit, we saw the pre-World War I Expressionist collection and Thannhauser Collection.
The Guggenheim frequently borrows artworks from its other four branches located in Bilbao, Berlin, Abu Dhabi, and Venice, which is known as the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. Peggy Guggenheim was Solomon R. Guggenheim’s niece whose father died on the Titanic when she was a young girl. Her uncles supported her and the rest of her immediate family. She eventually came to resent her uncles, as she felt dependent on them. Peggy eventually left for Europe and founded her own museum in Venice which houses abstract, Cubist, and Surrealist art works.
The works on display in the Guggenheim are hung on the walls of the museum whose floor spirals upward. We did not have any difficulty observing the paintings, as the slant was barley perceptible. As we reached the upper levels of the museum we looked down and remarked that it did not seem as we saw all those paintings already. Walking through the museum was like a timeless ascent through art, which the architecture of the Guggenheim attempts to capture. The museum organized Kandinsky’s work in chronological order starting with his earlier works at the bottom and continuing with his later works on the top. At the beginning of each floor, parts of Kandinsky’s biography are written on the walls accompanied with pictures, as well as explanations of the art phase in Kandinsky’s life that is represented in the upcoming works. We appreciated this as it gave us a specific mind frame when looking at the paintings.
The audio headsets that the museum supplies explain many of the works of art. We found this especially useful in the Kandinsky exhibit. His work is primarily abstract so we would have had difficulty deciphering the images in his paintings. Furthermore, Kandinsky uses various artistic techniques in his works, which we would have not picked up without the audiotape pointing them out to us. However, the recordings only provided explanations for about one-third of the pieces in the exhibit so we found it frustrating at times trying to understand the works and even making out basic images. We were able to offset this annoyance by attempting to interpret the paintings on our own which turned out to be very fun and humorous at times. We discovered later on that we were correct with some of our assumptions and analyses.
Kandinsky's Composition VII (1913)
One element of the museum that is noteworthy is its architectural form and structure. Frank Lloyd Wright, who was highly influenced by Kandinsky’s work, employed specific geometric shapes to elicit certain emotions from the visitors. Wright remarks, “Certain geometric forms have come to symbolize for us and potently to suggest certain human ideas, moods and sentiments- as fore instance: the circle, infinity; the triangle, structural unity; the spire, aspiration; the spiral, organic process; the square, integrity.” All these shapes are present in the structure of the Guggenheim and did in fact influence our visit there.
The Thannhausser Collection and pre-World War I Expressionist art collection are on permanent display at the Guggenheim. The Thannhausser family donated their collection on condition that it be put on permanent display. It is housed in a gallery just to the side of the main spiraling gallery on the third level of the museum. We found the collection to be a respite from the long and at times, wearying Kandinsky exhibit. It represents the museum’s break from its initial mission, which was devoted to modern, non-objective art. The collections include masterpieces by Picasso, such as Le Moulin de la Galette and Woman with Yellow Hair which we all really appreciated, as the audio tape explained the meaning of the picture: Picasso’s mistress whom he viewed tenderly and lovingly. There are also works by Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse, and Marc Chagall.
Picasso's Woman with Yellow Hair (1931)
We very much enjoyed our visit to the Guggenheim. It was a privilege to view the artwork of Wassily Kandinsky who had a unique role in the Guggenheim’s development as well as a strong influence on the museum’s celebrated structure. The museum certainly met our expectations as it provides us with the knowledge and enjoyment that we set out to achieve with our visit there.
Works Cited
“About the Collection.” New York Guggenheim Museum. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Web. 4 Oct 2009.
<http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/about-the-collection>.
Davis, John H. The Guggenheims: An American Epic. William Morrow and Co. June 1978. Print.
Henderson, Amy. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum: An Architectural Appreciation. New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2002. Print.
Irwin, and Debi Unger. The Guggenheims: A Family History. New York: Harper Collins Publishers. 2005. Print.
“Guggenheim Guide Exhibitions.” [Brochure]. New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2009.
Guggenheim, Peggy. Confessions of an Art Addict. New Jersey: The Ecco Press, 1960. Print.
Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1995. Print.
