The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is a museum on the Grand Canal in Venice located in Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.
Gathering mainly the personal art collection of Peggy Guggenheim
(1898–1979), ex-wife of artist Max Ernst and niece of tycoon Solomon R.
Guggenheim, this museum, once Peggy Guggenheim's private home, brings
together a collection in somewhat smaller and more concentrated than
those of the other Guggenheim museums. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection
is however one of the main Italian museums in the field of European and
American art of the first half of the twentieth century.
Starting
from June 2017, after 37 years at the helm, Philip Rylands leaves the
Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice to a new management: Karole P. B.
Vail takes office, who at the same time assumes a coordination position
also for the Solomon R. Guggenheim, based in New York.
The
exhibited works include some pre-eminent examples of US modernism and
Italian futurism. The collection also includes Cubist, Surrealist and
Abstract Expressionist works. These include notable works by Picasso,
Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Brâncuși (including a sculpture from the
Bird in Space series), William Congdon, Conrad Marca-Relli and Jackson
Pollock. The collection of informal Italian abstract art is also
complete and of particular value, with important works by Lucio Fontana,
Afro Basaldella, Agostino Bonalumi, Pietro Consagra, Toti Scialoja,
Giuseppe Santomaso, Tancredi Parmeggiani, Emilio Vedova, Carla Accardi
and Rosalda Gilardi. Her most famous work is the 1948 bronze The Angel
of the City by Marino Marini, positioned in front of the Palazzo Venier
dei Leoni, where the museum is located.
Until 1979, the year of
Peggy Guggenheim's death, by will of the owner, once a week most of the
house was opened free of charge to the public, who could thus enjoy the
complete collection of works of art held therein. Peggy Guggenheim
herself is buried in an urn placed in a corner of the private garden,
together with her many dogs.
Permanently visited by more than
350,000 people a year, in October 2012 the museum's collection was
increased by the donation of the US millionaire couple Hannelore and
Rudolph Schulhof, including 83 works by the most important contemporary
artists, including Alberto Burri, Alexander Calder, Lucio Fontana,
Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Mark Rothko, Claes Oldenburg, Frank Stella,
Tomonori Toyofuku, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Sol LeWitt, Anish Kapoor.
In autumn 2016, the museum was expanded with the purchase of one
last building. A new cafeteria, a small educational center and a deposit
for the works have been created. Thanks to the movement of the
cafeteria, it was possible to free up new exhibition halls. The museum
has also opened itself to the public in an educational way, starting
with activities dedicated to primary schools and those for families.
From an idea born in 1980, today the museum enjoys an international
internship program which in 2016 brought 150 young art-loving students
to Venice (coming from 42 countries); thanks to these services and to
its fame, the museum has about 400,000 visitors a year, since it ranks
it as the second most visited Venetian museum (Palazzo Ducale holds the
record).
Rene Magritte
Empire of Lights, 1954
Pablo Picasso
On
the beach, 1937
Wassily Kandinsky
Upwards (Empor), 1929
Marcel Duchamp
Box in a suitcase, 1941
Max Ernst
The
dressing of the bride, 1939-1940
Umberto Boccioni
Matter,
1912-1913
Marc Chagall
Rain, 1911
Salvador Dali
The
Birth of Liquid Desires, 1932
Jackson Pollock
Alchemy, 1947