It’s a blessing to have friends who agree on a whim to go to a museum for absolutely no reason at all except for the pure enjoyment of it.  Last weekend, Caitlin, Shane, and I took it upon ourselves to do just that.  We took a bus and train to the wondrous Guggenheim museum!  I had been there before in high school, and I absolutely loved it.  Aside from the captivating pieces that covered the walls of the museum, the building itself draws its guests in.  The museum is designed in a spiral so that visitors can walk through all the exhibits down a ramp for seven floors.  To the right is a picture that I took of the layout of the building when I went a couple of years ago.

I was especially excited for my friends to see this amazing museum, but to our dismay it was under construction due to the addition of a new exhibit.  The ramps were consequently closed off, and fewer collections were on display. My favorite of the collections was the Thannhauser collection.  Within the gallery is 19th and early 20th century art given to the museum by Justin K. and Hilde Thannhauser.  In 1909, Thannhauser founded the Moderne Galerie in Munich.  It included the French Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, Italian Futurists, and contemporary German artists. Kandinsky called it “perhaps the most beautiful exhibition spaces in all of Munich” and in 1913, it took up the first major Pablo Picasso retrospective.

Because Solomon R. Guggenheim shared the similar goal with the Thannhausers’ of promoting artistic progress, in 1963 Justin K. Thannhauser gave a large sum of his collection to the Guggenheim Foundation.  It includes pieces by Cézanne, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Van Gogh and over 30 works by Picasso.  Unlike some of the other exhibitions at the museum, this one is ongoing.

One of my favorite pieces is by the French Impressionist, Claude Monet.  To the left is the piece in the collection (The Palazzo Ducale, Seen from San Giorgio Maggiore (Le Palais Ducal vu de Saint-Georges Majeur)).  I love the strokes that he uses in almost all of his paintings that create an undefined yet crisp look.  Van Gogh does this in a lot of his pieces in and out of the collection as well.  I realized after going to the Met and the Guggenheim that this impressionistic art is my favorite; it is both abstract and real at the same time. 

Here is another piece to the right that really caught my eye by Edouard Manet called Before the Mirror (Devant la glace).  In his life, Manet was actually very important in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.

This may not be the type of art that interests you, but the Guggenheim has a ton more than this that will interest almost anyone.  If anything The Hugo Boss Prize 2010: Hans-Peter Feldmann will catch your attention.  In short, Feldmann won $100,000 for achievement in contemporary art, and for a solo exhibit in the Guggenheim, he hung all the money up on the wall in one dollar bills.  It’s quite an amazing sight to see.

The entire museum is definitely worth your time– even more so when it’s not under construction (starting November 4th)! I’m definitely going back! Plus, it’s free with your cultural passport.  To find out more click here.