Guggenheim Museum history

The foundation's first venue for the display of art, the "Museum of Non-Objective Painting", opened in 1939 under the direction of Rebay, in midtown Manhattan.

In 1943, Rebay and Guggenheim wrote a letter to Frank Lloyd Wright asking him to design a structure to house and display the collection.

In 1948, the collection was greatly expanded through the purchase of art dealer Karl Nierendorf's estate of some 730 objects, notably German expressionist paintings.

On July 28, 1949, a year after she exhibited her collection at the Venice Biennale, Peggy Guggenheim bought the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni from Viscontessa Doris Castlerosse.

In the spring of 1951 she began to invite the public into the palazzo to view her collection three days a week—a tradition she continued from Easter through October in the years to come.

The museum was renamed the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1952.

In 1953, the foundation's collecting criteria expanded under its new director, James Johnson Sweeney.

It was not until 1956 that construction of the museum, renamed in Guggenheim’s memory, finally began.

Instead, in 1958, she built a one-story barchessa in the garden, modeled loosely on the wing of the Palladia villa Emo at Fanzole.

On October 21, 1959, ten years after the death of Solomon Guggenheim and six months after the death of Frank Lloyd Wright, the Museum first opened its doors to large crowds.

In 1960, Peggy commissioned artist Claire Falkenstein to create new doors to replace the palazzo’s heavy wooden gates.

Thomas M. Messer succeeded Sweeney as director of the museum (but not the foundation) in 1961 and stayed for 27 years, the longest tenure of any of the city's major arts institutions' directors.

Almost immediately, in 1962, Messer took a risk putting on a large exhibition that combined the Guggenheim's paintings with sculptures on loan from the Hirshhorn collection.

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 collection and palace were donated to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1979.

In 1980, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection opened under the management of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, to which Peggy had given her palazzo and collection during her lifetime.

These 73 works include Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and French modern masterpieces, including important works by Paul Gauguin, Édouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Vincent van Gogh and 32 works by Pablo Picasso. "Works and Process" is a series of performances at the Guggenheim begun in 1984.

It was not until 1991, however, that Basque authorities proposed the idea for a Guggenheim Museum Bilbao to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

In 1992, after a major interior renovation, the museum reopened with the entire original Wright building now devoted to exhibition space and completely open to the public for the first time.

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened in 1997 in the city of Bilbao as a cooperative venture between the Guggenheim Foundation and the Basque regional administration of northwestern Spain.

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.

Despite attracting more than a million visitors, the Guggenheim Las Vegas closes in 2003.

Richard Serra’s monumental site-specific installation The Matter of Time (2005) opens at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

In 2006 it was announced that a new Guggenheim museum—the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum, designed by Gehry—would be built on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi as part of a proposed cultural district planned to include, among other museums, a satellite location of the Louvre.

On September 22, 2008, the Guggenheim celebrated the completion of a three-year restoration project.

The restoration is scheduled to be finished in time for the 50th anniversary of the museum’s opening in 2009.

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.

The Foundation closed in 2011.

In 2013, nearly 1.2 million people visited the museum, and its James Turrell exhibition was the most popular in New York City in terms of daily attendance.

In June 2014, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation launches its first open, anonymous, international design competition for a proposed Guggenheim museum in the Finnish capital of Helsinki.

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.

The director of the Guggenheim Museum and Foundation indicated in 2019 that, after years of delay, construction was expected to begin but offered no timeline.