New York’s Guggenheim Museum is More Than Just a Place to View Art

More than a place to view art, New York’s Guggenheim Museum is its own masterpiece. In its 65th year, it’s still ahead of the curve.

“I still stand in awe of this building and all it represents,” says Naomi Beckwith, deputy director and chief curator of the Guggenheim Museum. New York’s circular, space-age-looking gallery, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, tends to have that effect on people. “It’s a multi-layered space so you can see layers of art practice simultaneously, different time periods simultaneously – history is not flat at the Guggenheim but a three-dimensional, tangible experience.”

In the beginning, the late American industrialist and prolific art collector Solomon R. Guggenheim didn't want to build a museum in New York – and certainly not uptown among the brownstones and skyscrapers. But he was eventually won over by a location on Fifth Avenue opposite Central Park. The project, which opened in 1959, took 16 years to realise (by which time both Guggenheim and Lloyd Wright had passed away) and today remains a beacon of American culture, with some 800,000 visitors a year wandering its hallowed halls to gaze upon works of modern, contemporary and Impressionist art.

Part 1: A collector’s life

“I got to feel those pictures so deeply that I wanted them to live with me,” Guggenheim once said of his art collection, which comprised more than 150 canvases by Vasily Kandinsky (some of which are on show until 10 March at the Art Gallery of NSW’s Kandinsky exhibition, curated with the Guggenheim Museum), along with pieces by Robert Delaunay, Marc Chagall, Paul Klee and Joan Miró.

With his wife, Irene, Guggenheim came to appreciate modern art later in life via Hilla Rebay, a German painter and collector. The couple’s enthusiasm was potent. As early as the 1930s, well before the museum opened, the Guggenheims invited the public to peruse the collection by private appointment in their apartments in the nearby Plaza Hotel.

In 1937, Rebay was instrumental in setting up the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and later the museum, which she envisaged as a “museum-temple”. For her, abstract art was a kind of religion.

Part 2: A new architectural blueprint

“Of the World Heritage properties in America, 12 were made by God and eight were made by Frank Lloyd Wright” is how architecture and design podcaster Roman Mars describes the Guggenheim on an audio guide he recorded for the museum’s 60th anniversary in 2019.

That said, at its inauguration in 1959, Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece was widely panned. There were comparisons to everything from an inverted cupcake to an indigestible hot cross bun. But as divisive as the exterior was, Lloyd Wright designed buildings from within; an ideology he called organic architecture, in which the structure is approached as a living organism.

With the Guggenheim Museum, he proposed a completely new way to view art, based on a journey that follows a 402-metrelong ramp as it spirals from the bottom to the top of the main gallery at an 18-degree angle, lit by natural light streaming in from a huge domed skylight. The architect also drafted walls that angle outward at 97 degrees – a controversial decision at the time of planning – to emulate the slant of a painter’s easel. “It is designed to be a social space,” says Beckwith. “You view art through the perspective of others. The space was built to encourage complicated and complex conversations.”

Though he was at the height of his powers, Lloyd Wright didn’t always have the final word: he thought the exterior should be gold or red but Rebay quashed the idea. While the architect’s choice was rejected, the façade wasn’t always the pale grey it is today – during a restoration, layers of paint were scraped back to reveal the building’s original brownish-yellow shade.

Part 3: The Guggenheim today

Beyond the museum walls, the vibrancy and elegance of the Upper East Side beckons. To stay the night nearby, The Mark hotel, flamboyantly designed by Jacques Grange, is only a short walk away. Or follow in the founder’s footsteps and book a room with a view over Central Park at The Plaza. “Afternoon tea in The Palm Court is the not-to bemissed dining experience when visiting New York City. It has been served here for over 115 years,” says a Plaza concierge. For neighbourhood dining, the hotel recommends The Polo Bar, Harry Cipriani, Sarabeth’s, Bergdorf Goodman’s BG Restaurant and Quality Italian.

Other Uptown institutions include The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cooper Hewitt design museum, legendary burger joint J.G. Melon (which cameoed in the Oscar-winning film Kramer vs Kramer) and Bemelmans Bar in The Carlyle hotel, famous for serving one of the best Dirty Martinis in town. Nab a table at cosy Italian restaurant Elio’s and you might spot locals such as Jerry Seinfeld, though few famous New Yorkers are more conspicuous than the Guggenheim.

Currently on show until April, Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility unites more than 100 works by 28 multigenerational artists along the building’s central rotunda. Ashley James, associate curator of contemporary art, says the exhibition asks questions about Black visibility in art and public life. “These are questions that Black artists have been engaging in for a very long time but it’s by no means just [about] Black artists or Black people. It points to the fact that this is just a kind of human concept, this question of visibility.”

Art critic Jerry Saltz once called the Guggenheim “a spaceship laboratory whose interior is all spiraling ramps, sloping floors and secret stairwells”. Lloyd Wright had envisioned guests would start at the top and though opinions are mixed on the best way to experience the unique building, taking the elevator to level six and strolling down is surely the less strenuous option.

For the best vantage point outside, staff and in-the-know visitors like to sit and take in the view of the museum’s exterior from the benches across Fifth Avenue. For the true NYC experience, grab a bag lunch from nearby Champignon Cafe on Madison and people-watch. One gets the feeling it’s exactly what Lloyd Wright intended.

SEE ALSO: 26 New Ways to Experience New York