Guggenheim Museum

The Guggenheim Museum is a modern art museum located on the Upper East Side in New York City. It is the best-known of several museums founded by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

Originally called "The Museum of Non-Objective Painting", the Guggenheim was founded in 1937 to showcase avant-garde art by high modernists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian. It moved to its present location, at the corners of 89th Street and Fifth Avenue (overlooking Central Park), in 1959, when Frank Lloyd Wright's design for the site was completed.

Admission

Art (Versus?) Architecture

Interestingly, the building's distinctive design became the best-known work of art in the museum. From the street, the building resembles a white ribbon curled into a cylindrical stack, slightly wider at the top than the bottom.

Internally, the viewing gallery forms a gentle spiral from the ground level up to the top of the building. Paintings are displayed along the walls of the spiral and also in viewing rooms found at stages along the way. Some artists have remarked that the building's unusual layout makes it difficult to arrange a compelling display - particularly in the offshoot areas.

More Controversial Architecture

In 1992, the building was supplemented by an adjoining rectangular tower, taller than the original spiral. This augmentation of Wright's original design - widely regarded as a classic of American architecture - was controversial. The building's white color, and the relative proportions of the boxy, rectangular tower and the squat, cylindrical rotunda, led some observers to remark that the new ensemble resembled a toilet bowl.

Recent News & Events

Guggenheim expands into Emirates
A new Guggenheim museum is slated for completion in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, under the design of noted architect Frank Gehry. Expected to be completed by 2011, it is the latest addition to an expanding global museum brand which has branches in Bilbao, Spain; Berlin, Germany; Venice and Las Vegas, USA. The Guggenheim Foundation's flagship museum for modern and contemporary art is in New York.