On this day in New York · October 21, 1959
The Guggenheim Opens on Fifth Avenue
A white spiral ramp landed across the street from Central Park, and Frank Lloyd Wright never got to see New Yorkers walk it.
The facts
- Commissioned
- Frank Lloyd Wright took the job in June 1943, when he was 76 years old
- Design process
- About fifteen years and more than 700 sketches before the building was finished
- Construction
- Ground was broken in 1956; the building topped out in May 1958
- Wright's death
- Wright died in April 1959, six months before the museum he designed finally opened
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Frank Lloyd Wright's spiraling gallery at 89th Street and Fifth Avenue, was formally dedicated on October 21, 1959, a day after a press preview drew reporters and photographers into the building for the first time. Wright had taken the commission back in 1943 from Solomon Guggenheim and his art advisor Hilla Rebay, who wanted a home for their growing collection of abstract and non-objective painting. What followed was fifteen years of fighting: with city building inspectors, with cost overruns, and with the museum's own director over whether the art or the architecture would run the show. Wright died in April 1959, six months before the doors opened, so he never saw the crowds who showed up 600 an hour to walk his ramp.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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look like a Protestant barn
Frank Lloyd Wright, on how his museum would make the nearby Metropolitan Museum of Art appear by comparison
Source: Wikipedia -
In this sense almost every museum of our time is a child of the Guggenheim.
Critic Paul Goldberger, writing on the building's lasting influence on museum design
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
The Guggenheim made it normal for a museum building itself to be the main attraction, and every architect since who's designed a showpiece museum instead of a plain box owes it something.
Sources
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