History

Founded in 1937, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was designed by William Muschenheim and responsible for providing many people with their first encounters with great artists. 

The Foundation established its first museum in New York — the Museum of Non-Objective Painting was opened in 1939 and followed by the building of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Bilbao.

Famous for its exhibitions of Solomon’s Guggenheim unusual art collection, the eccentric gallery housed the works of big names such as Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Joan Miró and many others.

In the early 1940s the need of a permanent space to house Guggenheim’s art collection became evident, so in 1943 Frank Lloyd Wright, a renowned architect, gained the commission to design the New York museum, which was opened on October 21, 1959.

POTD 20181221 | Photography The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation