Founded in 1939 with Solomon R. Guggenheim's personal art collection, (he made a fortune in the railroad industry) the museum was relocated in 1959, after the brilliant Frank Lloyd Wright was contracted to construct a new home for its treasures. Not without controversy at first, as were many of Wright's designs, the building has since become known as an imaginative icon of 20th century architecture.
The building itself is a remarkable work of art, exhibiting its contents in a circular rotunda with a gently sloping ramp running top to bottom (visitors are meant to take an elevator to the skylight level and walk downward). The ever-expanding permanent collection as well as temporary collections are shared among the Guggenheim's sister museums in Venice, Abu Dhabi, and Bilbao.
The Guggenheim is home to renowned collections of impressionist, post-impressionist, early modern, contemporary, minimalist, post-minimalist, and conceptual art. Including the works of artists such as Paul Klee, Amedeo Modigliani, Fernand Leger, Franz Marc, Jean Metzinger, and many others.
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