Frank Lloyd Wright was commissioned in 1943 to design a building to house the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, which had been established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1939. Hilla Rebay, the curator of the foundation and director of the museum, instructed Wright with this now famous quote, “I want a temple of spirit, a monument!”

Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece was not open to the public untill October 21, 1959, six months after his own death. The building was immediately recognized as an architectural landmark and to many the novel design has become the symbol of the Guggenheim Museum. Some would say The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is arguably the most important building of Wright’s late career. A monument to modernism, the unique architecture of the space, with its spiral ramp riding to a domed skylight, continues to thrill visitors and provide a unique forum for the presentation of contemporary art.

“Wright’s building made it socially and culturally acceptable for an architect to design a highly expressive, intensely personal museum. In this sense almost every museum of our time is a child of the Guggenheim.” said Paul Goldberger.

In addition to special exhibitions, the Guggenheim Museum presents permanent collection shows that focus on the museum’s areas of interest and specialization. On view now from the collection are portions of the Thannhauser Collection presenting masterpieces by such artists as Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and Vincent van Gogh. Also on view from the Kandinsky Gallery is Expressionist Painting Before World War I,these works include Post-Impressionists, such as Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse and the Fauves, the Cubists in Paris, as well as masterworks by Kandinsky.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum located at 1071 Fifth Avenue (at 89th Street),New York, NY 10128-0173

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