Designer of the Month: Frank Lloyd Wright

Week 5: the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

 Courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Like Fallingwater, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is one of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture masterpieces. Built from 1956-59, the building itself was actually commissioned in 1943, but it took 13 years just to find a suitable site.[1] In 1943, Wright received a letter from Hilla Rebay, the art advisor to Solomon R. Guggenheim, asking Wright to design a new building to house Guggenheim's Museum of Non-Objective Painting.[2] As Matthew Drutt, on the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's website, explains:

The project evolved into a complex struggle pitting the architect against his clients, city officials, the art world, and public opinion. Both Guggenheim and Wright would die before the building's 1959 completion. The resultant achievement, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, testifies not only to Wright's architectural genius, but to the adventurous spirit that characterized its founders.

Wright made no secret of his disenchantment with Guggenheim's choice of New York for his museum: "I can think of several more desirable places in the world to build his great museum," Wright wrote in 1949 to Arthur Holden, "but we will have to try New York." To Wright, the city was overbuilt, overpopulated, and lacked architectural merit.[3]

Looking down through the atrium at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, January 1, 1971. Photograph by Imagno/Getty Images. Courtesy of LIFE Magazine.

During the 13 years it took before the two lots facing 5th Avenue were purchased as the site for the museum, Wright was busy designing his upside-down spiral "ziggaurat."[4] Wright chose a spiral for his design because he claimed that it was the most exciting architectural form because it existed in three dimensions, with the expanding spiral appearing to defy gravity.[5] Additionally, the museum was designed to stand in contrast to the linear form of the horizontal street grid and vertical skyscrapers of Manhattan.[6] Rather than relying on conventional museum design, where visitors are led through a series of interconnected rooms, retracing their steps on the way out, Wright instead chose to lead them to the top of the building by elevator, and back down on the continuous slope of a ramp.[7] The interior galleries were divided into self-contained sections, with the open rotunda affording viewers the possibility of seeing views of several galleries of work on different levels.[8]

The dome of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum after the 2007-08 renovation, May 14, 2009. Photograph by STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images. Courtesy of LIFE Magazine.

The design and construction of such a unique structure necessitated more than 700 drawings and numerous sets of construction documents, with Wright battling the city over building codes.[9] As Matthew Drutt further explains:

Some people, especially artists, criticized Wright for creating a museum environment that might overpower the art inside. "On the contrary," he wrote, "it was to make the building and the painting an uninterrupted, beautiful symphony such as never existed in the World of Art before." In conquering the static regularity of geometric design and combining it with the plasticity of nature, Wright produced a vibrant building whose architecture is as refreshing now as it was 40 years ago. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is arguably Wright's most eloquent presentation and certainly the most important building of his late career.[10] 

For more information about the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, including exhibition schedule, visit the museum's website, here.


[1] Marie Clayton, "Commercial and Civic Commissions," Frank Lloyd Wright Field Guide: His 100 Greatest Works (London: Salamander Books Ltd., 2002), 387.

[2] Matthew Drutt, "The Frank Lloyd Wright Building," Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum online, http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/about/frank-lloyd-wright-building, (accessed December 22, 2010).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Marie Clayton, "Commercial and Civic Commissions," Frank Lloyd Wright Field Guide: His 100 Greatest Works (London: Salamander Books Ltd., 2002), 387.

[5] Ibid., 388. 

[6] Alan Hess, "Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum," Frank Lloyd Wright: The Buildings (New York: Rizzoli, 2008), 232.

[7] Matthew Drutt, "The Frank Lloyd Wright Building," Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum online, http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/about/frank-lloyd-wright-building, (accessed December 22, 2010).

[8] Ibid. 

[9] Marie Clayton, "Commercial and Civic Commissions," Frank Lloyd Wright Field Guide: His 100 Greatest Works (London: Salamander Books Ltd., 2002), 388.

[10] Matthew Drutt, "The Frank Lloyd Wright Building," Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum online, http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/about/frank-lloyd-wright-building, (accessed December 22, 2010).