Walking through Central Park in New York City, you can’t help but notice a strange “alien” building. And this cosmic facade won’t deceive you if you look inside: the Guggenheim Museum has earned a reputation as the most unusual museum of modern art.
A little history
The museum appeared in the late 60s, when the copper and coal king Solomon Guggenheim discovered the beauty of patronage in his old age. This did not fail to take advantage of the famous art historian and connoisseur of fine art Hill Ribei von Enreinweissen. The famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright was immediately involved in the project.
The museum is now a striking symbol of New York City, along with the Statue of Liberty and Times Square.
There is a huge gap in the cone ceiling of the building which acts as a source of natural daylight. The building in the form of an inverted tower is the perfect setting for the most extraordinary events, which is why avant-gardists around the world have long been fond of the Guggenheim Museum.
Museum exhibit
Changing the usual system of familiarization with the exhibition, architect Wright sends museum guests to the upper, seventh floor by elevator from the very beginning. Tourists gradually descend on foot along a spiraling ramp, immersed in a world of contemporary painting, sculpture and decorative arts.
Guggenheim Museum
In addition to permanent exhibitions, the museum holds exhibitions and presentations of contemporary art objects, such as the projects “Africa: Continental Art” (1996), “China: Five Millennia” (1998), “Aztec Empire” (2004), a large-scale conceptual exhibition “Russia” (2005).
The Guggenheim Museum was used for the filming of “Men in Black”, “Mr. Popper’s Penguins” and “International”.
The museum’s halls hold a record-breaking collection of paintings from the late 19th and 20th centuries (about 6,000 paintings), including works by Kandinsky, Chagall, Arp, Bourgeois, Nirendorf, Cézanne, Pollack, Rauschenberg, Dreyer, Serra, Warhol, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Klee, Picasso, Russo, Giacometti, Brynkush, Miro, Leger, Delaunay, Goncharov and Rothko.
At the initiative of the Guggenheim Foundation, branches of the New York museum began to appear in Europe. The museum network now includes an exhibition in Venice, a gallery in London, the Deutsche Guggenheim Museum in Berlin and a museum in Bilbao, Spain. In Las Vegas, the Guggenheim Hermitage hosted visitors from 2001 to 2008.
Opening hours, address and prices
Access to the museum is daily from 10:00 a.m. to 5:45 p.m., Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 7:45 p.m. Thursday is a day off.
The cost of a ticket is 25 USD, for students and people over 65 it is 18 USD, for children under 12 years old admission is free. One way to save money is to wait until Saturday and from 5:45 pm to 7:45 pm pay as much as you want, but there is a long line. You can get into the museum for free during the annual “Museum Mile” festival.