The Guggenheim

According to the Guggenheim Foundation History, “ the Guggenheim and its network of museums is one of the most visited cultural institutions in the world”. The Guggenheim Museum started in out 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, which resided in a building that had previously been a car showroom. Due to a need for a permanent location, Frank Lloyd Wright was hired to design a new building in 1943; the building was finished in 1959. Although the Guggenheim originally held only non-objective art, it became a museum for all art of the twentieth century in 1954. The museum began to acquire different types of art, such as the Panza collection (minimalist sculptures and paintings, perceptual art). In the 1990’s, the museum began to include photography and other types of multimedia art. Also, there are several other Guggenheim museums built across the globe; the Solomon R. Guggenheim collection in New York (1959), the Peggy Guggenheim collection in Venice (1985), and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997), the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin (1997-2013), and the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas (2001-2008). Currently, the Guggenheim plans to build museums in Abu Dhabi and Vilnius; the museum in Abu Dhabi is collaborating with other museums (such as the Louvre) to create a district on Middle Eastern culture, and the museum in Vilnius is a collection of modern and contemporary art designed for public education.

The blog of Rebecca Mir, who works in the Guggenheim’s Education Department, explores how the Guggenheim Museum reaches out to other cultures and generations. One of her posts discusses how the Guggenheim combines art and STEM through game designing. Middle-school kids are able to explore architecture by designing their own video games, making for a more interesting and memorable workshop. Another one of her posts discusses how the museums held a “Guggathon”, which entailed teachers, students, architects, and museums workers to edit Wikipedia pages on architecture. These editors were given various books and sites to use, as they contributed to public resources for GLAMs and to open-sources on architecture. Mir also wrote two posts on reaching out to multilingual crowds. The first post explores how museums expanded their staff and programs to include other languages. Although these languages are prioritized through analyses of the New York City population (Hispanic culture is a top priority), museums have been creative on how they communicate with these cultures; apps, designated staff members, pamphlets, and site links have all been used to reach out to multilingual audiences. The second post discusses how museums reach out specifically through technology as a way to directly connect with the multilingual population. By directly reaching out to the multilingual crowd, museums can prioritize how to create resources and present information.