The Iconic Guggenheim Museum in New York City: The Return Visit

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Back in July of 2018, myself, my daughter and my late wife Madelyn paid a visit to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. It was our first visit to the iconic art museum and as I was writing this post, I suddenly realized that those few days in the city where we were born and raised would be Madelyn’s last (she would succumb to a brain tumor a few months later). Fortunately, our last visit to NYC as a power trio was a very memorable one. A cherished memory.

But I digress…

I was back in The Big Apple (solo!) a few weeks back to spend Easter with the family and, of far lesser importance, to catch the great Robert Plant performing with his band Saving Grace (Photographs HERE) at the cavernous Cathedral of St. John the Divine (Photographs HERE). I did have a few days to kill in between my arrival and the Robert Plant show so I used one of those days to revisit the Guggenheim Museum after 8 years.

Guggenheim Museum

Not much has changed (a good thing) save for the featured exhibition, courtesy of American artist Carol Bove, whose inventive practice ranges widely, from assemblages of paperback books and intimate paper collages to towering steel sculptures. Bove stands as one of the foremost contemporary artists working today; her work has consistently challenged and expanded the possibilities of formal abstraction (at least that’s what the experts say about her). Her work, however, was a good fit for the museum’s now-iconic spiral design.

American artist Carol Bove

The Guggenheim Museum, a landmark work of 20th-century architecture designed by acclaimed American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, took 15 years to build and drew considerable controversy for the unusual shape of its display spaces. It was completed in 1959 and consists of a six-story helical ramp which extends along the main gallery’s perimeter, under a central ceiling skylight.

Wright’s design differed from the conventional approach to museum layout, in which visitors pass through a series of interconnected rooms and retrace their steps when exiting. Under Wright’s plan, guests rode an elevator to the top of the building and descended the ramp, viewing the main gallery itself as a work of art.

Wright’s masterpiece opened to the public on October 21, 1959. Alas, it was six months after his death, but was immediately recognized as an architectural icon. In the words of Pulitzer Prize–winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger, “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.”

The Guggenheim has about 8,000 works in its collection as of 2022 – about 1,700 are part of its online collection. The museum building, however, has a relatively small capacity. According to The Wall Street Journal, following the 1992 renovation, the Guggenheim could show “upward of 6%”(!) of its then 5,000-piece collection. The permanent collection is typically displayed in the side galleries and annexes, while the main gallery is used for special exhibitions.

The museum was added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) on May 19, 2005, and was designated as a National Historic Landmark on October 6, 2008. UNESCO added eight properties, including the Guggenheim, to the World Heritage List in July 2019 under the title “The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright“.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is open every day, 10:30am–5:30pm. Tickets will set you back $30 with discounts for seniors and students. You can check out my photographs (and read up on more of the history) of the Guggenheim from my 2018 post HERE. For now, enjoy this year’s gallery…