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A Historical Look at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
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“I need a fighter, a lover of space, an originator, a tester and a wise man,” the curator Hilla Rebay wrote to Frank Lloyd Wright in 1943.
Rebay was the founding director of what was then known as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, whose first home in New York was at 24 East 54th Street in Manhattan. The museum housed the art collection of wealthy businessman Solomon R. Guggenheim, which whose works comprised of non-objective, or abstract, artists like Piet Mondrian, Vasily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee. Using invented color, shape, and form—instead of employing traditional geometries and hues—it seemed to react to and feel explicitly World War II’s tremors. In turn, Rebay and Guggenheim sought to commission from the famed architect a “Temple for the Spirit,” or rather, a museum that would house art of similar expression, unlike any other in the world. Though by 1943, Wright’s reputation as an architect was legendary, he had never been asked to design a building in Manhattan. He accepted the commission, and on October 21, 1959, 60 years ago today, the building now known as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opened at 1071 5th Avenue on New York’s Upper East Side.
Wright produced over 700 sketches for the museum, one of which included a red exterior because he believed the color represented creativity, and six working sketches; changes to the building’s design were even made after construction began in 1956. The designer was famously not a fan of New York City because of what he felt were its congestion and overpopulation, and six years into the project, in 1949, he wrote “I can think of several more desirable places in the world to build his great museum…but we will have to try New York.” He chose a site on Fifth Avenue near Central Park to be as close to nature—a perpetual inspiration—as possible.
Inside the finished museum, 1,416 feet of ramp spirals create a rotunda upward to a glass skylight in a shape said to be inspired by a nautilus shell. Wright envisioned patrons taking an elevator up to the top, then being able to stroll down the curving space looking at artwork, or as he once explained: “Let the elevator do the lifting so the visitor could do the drifting.” The design reinvented the concept of museums, which had previously been a host of rectangular boxes and featured defined floors. In fact, while the Guggenheim features a multitude of shapes—the spiral of its floors, the circles in its terrazzo, its triangular lighting—true rectangles and squares are a rarity; it’s a space created without 90-degree angles. The environment offers a layered experience of looking, with visitors seeing not only the artwork on the walls when they face inward, but seeing other people looking at the artwork and the building itself as they face outward.
Some artists were enraged at the idea of Wright’s design, concerned that it would overshadow the artwork entirely. But Wright created the space with the opposite idea in mind, seeking to “make the building and the painting an uninterrupted, beautiful symphony.” As much as his design was, and still is, criticized for its unusual shape, it’s equally praised. The writer Norman Mailer called it “wanton” and “barbaric” upon its completion, but Harvard architectural history professor Neil Levine admires its surrealism: “It’s a space of walking through and being relieved from the normal conditions of the world,” he said in 2009. “There’s no horizon line, there is no straight path, there’s no verticals, there’s no horizontals.”
Since it opened 60 years ago, many artists have embraced the building’s unusual structure to both show their work and create one-of-a-kind interactive experiences. Maurizio Cattelan suspended all of his works from the ceiling in giant hanging collage; Solange turned the entire space into a sanctuarial dance-theatre; Matthew Barney ran Vaseline through the rotunda into custom troughs. Far from overshadowing the artwork, the Guggenheim instead contributes to creative processes: creatives know artwork doesn’t only reside on the wall, and the Guggenheim can offer those alternative spaces that push work forward.
Though the building was completed six months after Wright passed in 1959, he would still have the final word on its merit: the building was named a National History Landmark in 1990, the youngest building ever to receive the accolade. Wright’s design would cause architects to rethink museums and their relationships to art forever. Suddenly, architecture didn’t have to play second fiddle to artwork; they could play together in harmony.
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createdAt:Fri, 18 Oct 2019 18:49:40 +0000
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