Day 4.2 - Solomon R Guggenheim Museum

The Guggenheim museum sits on Fifth Avenue, across from Central Park. I got there just after opening at 10pm, and there was already a queue to get in along the front, and around the corner. I nearly went past it and onto the Cooper-Hewitt, but saw that it was moving quite quickly, so joined it. The bottleneck was the revolving door, allowing only one person in at a time, but we soon got through that and into the great atrium of the magnificent Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building.





If you're unfamiliar with the building, you MUST go and find out more. I can't possibly do it justice here. Very briefly, the main exhibition space is a slow-curling spiral going up six layers, with additional exhibition space at each level. You will also see far better photos of the building than I was able to take.

The entry lobby was (not unexpectedly) swarming with people, with a long queue waiting at the admissions desk. Thankfully, my NYPass allowed me to queue-jump, and get my ticket from the Member's desk.

The main exhibition, called The Great Upheaval, is one showcasing the museum's own collection, showing the prewar development of the Post-Impressionists (that is, 1910 to 1918). Among other things, it shows the emergence of the Blue Rider group, and the development of cubism. The true non-objective art, with which the Guggenheim is particularly associated, isn't my favorite style, there were still some very appealing works in the exhibition. I haven't viewed it, but the link at the start of this paragraph has a video of the exhibition, if you're interested.

Although full of people, the artworks were spread out, with generally only one or two pieces per bay, so it didn't feel too crowded. Similarly, because you couldn't take photos in any of the galleries, people were actually looking at the artworks rather than looking through their cameras.

There was also a fair sized exhibit of Kandinsky at the Bauhaus, which was also interesting.

At the end, I perused the gift shop, but there was nothing that really grabbed my attention. Last time we'd been here, we'd bought a couple of t-shirts: JD got one with a Roy Lichtenstein work on it (a snarling dog, if I recall correctly), and I got one with a stylised representation of the building on it. This time, there was nothing that really appealed, nor that made it worth standing in the long queue for the register.