The Guggenheim Museum - Rebecca Samuels #6

The Guggenheim Museum

The Guggenheim Museum was commissioned by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1943 but was not started until 1956. There were many reasons for Wright’s late start—most importantly because of Solomon R. Guggenheim’s death. Three years later in 1959, the Guggenheim was opened to the public. (Most of this paragraph was rephrased from The Guggenheim Website)

My father and I walked from Grand Central all the way up to 89^th and 5^th for the Guggenheim Museum. We ended up getting there early and had to wait in line to get in. I was excited to finally have my father back by my side in this next museum experience. When we entered the museum, I was amazed with the architecture of the building as it spiraled up to the ceiling. My father thought it would be a good idea to take the elevator to the top floor and work our way down. When we reached the top floor I became really confused.

Most of what was on display at the Guggenheim were “sculptures”. In my eyes, they all looked the same and really didn’t help me on my journey to writing my paper. Most of the sculptures looked like crushed cars with different paint jobs. With the least bit of success in about 90 percent of the museum, I was left to rely on just one floor—Annex Level Two—The Thannhauser Collection. Spiraling down to the second floor, we met Loretta. She was probably one of the nicest security guards we have ever met in the museums. We were encouraged to look around, and so I did.

The little booklet I received when walking into the museum states that the Thannhauser Collection consisted of “more than thirty works by such artists as Paul Cezanne, Paul Gaugin, Edouard Manet, Camille Pissaro, and Vincent Van Gogh.” This particular collection contained mostly paintings as oppose to drawings. I noticed that most of the paintings were still lives and portraits from the 19^th and early 20^th century. These arts were given to the museum by Justin K. and Hilde Thannhauser (found this in my little booklet).

One of the artists besides Van Gogh that definitely caught my eye was George Seurat. Unfortunately the museum didn’t allow people to take pictures of anything except the main floor, so I was unable to capture any of his paintings. This made me rely on Google to remind me of what exactly each painting looked like. The part of his work I loved the best was his painting strokes. They weren’t all going the same way and it almost looked like a bunch of little “x’s” with different colors added for detail. One of his paintings showed a man bent over as he appeared to be raking/plowing the ground. Although he uses a lot of pale colors, Seurat had the ability to enter in shadows and shading. Standing far away, you can see what the painting is without the paintbrush strokes. As I stood close to it, I became interested in the painting technique and it seemed to amaze me.

Even though this museum contained many sculptures of what looked like cars, I would still consider this museum somewhat successful. Yes, I did travel to New York to see mostly sculptures, but in the end, I saw what I wanted to see and that was paintings! I believe in quality over quantity and even though the Thannhauser Collection was quite small, I was still able to retain some things from my visit. Also, I was able to notice George Seurat’s artwork. I thought it was a little inconvenient that I couldn’t take pictures but on the main floor so again I give props to Google for helping me remember exactly what the painting(s) looked like. I have just noticed (it’s funny how I noticed this on my last museum) that during every museum visit even without being told, there will always be one (or even a few) artists whose artwork sticks in your head. These times gave me a great opportunity to write about paintings in my paper.