The Peggy Guggenheim Collection celebrates 30 years

Published: 2007 - January/Febrary

Every summer from 1951 to December 1979, Peggy Guggenheim loved opening her own collection of modern art to the public. In Easter 1980, only months after the disappearance of the patron, on 23 December 1979, Palazzo Venier dei Leoni officially reopened its doors under the management of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York, becoming the most important museum in Italy for European and American art of the first half of the twentieth century. In 2010, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection celebrates its thirtieth year of life with a series of events, activities and workshops, carrying forward the spirit of openness and innovation that has always characterized the last ‘dogaressa’, Peggy Guggenheim. The intention is to celebrate the achievements of the museum, informing and promoting its content and its ideas developed in recent years in order to strengthen the image of the Collection as a place of production of  vibrant artistic and cultural activity. Through innovative channels of communication, such as social networking and the creation of a viral video, Peggy’s prosperity is transmitted to a new and wider public. One of the novelties of this upcoming 2010 will be the “room of time”, one of the rooms of the museum used to host various exhibitions which, in turn, offer an overview of the acquisitions over the years after the death of Peggy, along with some business less well-known works  in her collection. In addition to marking the thirtieth anniversary of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, 2010 is naturally a year rich in events and exhibitions that span a century of art history, ranging from pre-Raphaelite paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris, to the drawings of Bauhaus, and arriving to the American abstract expressionism by Adolph Gottlieb.The exhibition season begins on May Day, with the opening of ‘Utopia Matters. From Brotherhoods to Bauhaus’, an  exhibition curated by Vivien Greene, which examines the concept of utopia and analyzes its evolution of thought and modern Western art practices, through a series of international case studies that started in the early nineteenth century all the way up to 1933 - a year in which the influence of fascism and Stalinism put a stop to such projects. Among the movements represented are Les Barbus, William Morris and Arts and Crafts, the Cornish Colony, Neo-Impressionism, De Stijl and Russian Constructivism. From September 4 to January 9 2011, the creations of the American artist Adolph Gottlieb (1903 - 1974) will be on display, from his initial works of surrealistic influence to expressionism and abstract art, the first retrospective in Italy entirely dedicated to him. One of the other must-sees is a small exhibition in April, called ‘Art, Science and School’, dedicated to the work conducted by students of schools that adhere to the proposed educational project “School at the Guggenheim”, an initiative dedicated to all the schools in the Veneto, which will this year focus on the binomial Art and Science and the contaminations, methods and languages of the two disciplines.