From Private to Public: Collections at the Guggenheim

The metamorphosis from private collection to public museum is an extraordinary transition. For the Guggenheim Museum this occurred in 1937, when Solomon R. Guggenheim established a foundation with the goal of opening a museum to publicly exhibit and preserve his holdings of nonobjective art. Guggenheim, an industrialist turned impassioned art collector, had begun to amass his modern art collection eight years prior under the guidance of the German painter Hilla Rebay. Although a great champion of nonobjective art—a method of abstraction that aspired to spiritual and utopian goals—Guggenheim also actively sought work that did not fit the mold of nonobjectivity, acquiring paintings by Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, and Henri Rousseau.

Since that time, the museum's founding collection has been enhanced through major gifts and purchases from individuals who share Guggenheim's spirit. These acquisitions include eminent gallery director Karl Nierendorf's inventory of German Expressionist and early Abstract Expressionist art; Solomon's niece Peggy Guggenheim's collection of abstract and Surrealist painting and sculpture; Justin K. Thannhauser's array of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and early modern masterpieces; and important works from the estates of visionaries Rebay and Katherine S. Dreier. All brought to light some of the most significant artists of the twentieth century, and their personal compilations have been incorporated over the years into one comprehensive array of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century avant-garde art at the Guggenheim Museum.