calendario eventi  :: 

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20/7/2006

The Guggenheim

Bundeskunsthalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn

Collection

Part I: Collection
21 July 2006 - 7 January 2007
Press conference: 07/20/2006, 11 a.m.

Part II: Architecture (G)
Asymptote, Shigeru Ban, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Frank O. Gehry, Richard Gluckman, Vittorio Gregotti, Charles Gwathmey, Zaha Hadid, Hans Hollein, Arata Isozaki, Rem Koolhaas, Enrique Norten, Jean Nouvel, Frank Lloyd Wright
25 August - 12 November 2006
Press conference: 08/24/2006, 11 a.m.

The Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany and Deutsche Telekom are pleased to announce a major exhibition of key works from the collection of the Guggenheim Museum. The exhibition continues the successful series “The Great Collections", which presents masterpieces of the world’s most renowned museums to audiences in Bonn. Past exhibitions in this series have showcased the holdings of the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1992), Moderna Museet Stockholm (1996), the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (1997), the Museo del Prado, Madrid (1999) as well as the Tokyo National Museum (2003).

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The Guggenheim Collection
Founded by the enlightened collector and philanthropist Solomon R. Guggenheim in New York in 1937, the Guggenheim Foundation is the world’s first truly global visual arts institution, with, currently, five venues, in New York, Venice, Berlin, Bilbao and Las Vegas. The permanent collection of the Guggenheim Foundation is in great part the amalgamation of seven exceptional private collections that have come together over time. Solomon R. Guggenheim was the scion of a large family that had made its fortune in mining and the steel industry. From 1929, his art collection was decisively shaped by his advisor, the German baroness Hilla Rebay. Herself an abstract painter and a fervent supporter of the most radical trends of the European avant-garde, Hilla Rebay was the first director of the Guggenheim Museum which opened in 1939, initially under the name the Museum of Non-Objective Art.

Under her aegis the work of Wassily Kandinsky and that of other leading abstract painters became one of the cornerstones of the collection. An important group of works by artists such as Constantin Brancusi, Juan Gris and Kurt Schwitters entered the museum as a bequest from the collection of Katherine Dreier, who had been a close friend of Marcel Duchamp. The European character of the collection was further strengthened by acquisitions from the estates of two prominent German art dealers.

The collections of Karl Nierendorf (New York) and Justin K. Thannhauser (Berlin) enriched the Guggenheim holdings with, respectively, a significant assembly of works by Paul Klee, and a major group of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works, notably by Paul Ce'zanne, Pierre Auguste Renoir and Edouard Manet. In marked contrast to Solomon R. Guggenheim’s predilections, his flamboyant niece Peggy Guggenheim focused on Surrealism and American Abstract Expressionism. Her collection greatly expanded the holdings of the Foundation in 1979, bringing under its umbrella an unsurpassed collection of Max Ernst and key works by Jackson Pollock. The acquisition, in 1991, of the extensive Giuseppe Panza di Biumo collection of important post-1945 art from Europe and the U.S. further increased the depth and span of the Guggenheim collection.

The Guggenheim Museum is unique in its focus on the in-depth presentation of the œuvre of a select number of outstanding artists, among them Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Robert Delaunay, Constantin Brancusi, Piet Mondrian and Pablo Picasso. Representative displays of American post-war art from Abstract Expressionism (Mark Rothko), Pop Art (Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein) to Minimal and Postminimal Art (Carl Andre, Richard Serra, Robert Morris, Donald Judd, Bruce Nauman) bring the collection into the late twentieth century.

However, it is not only the exceptional quality of the collection that makes the Guggenheim one of the world’s most interesting museums; its near 70-year history is equally intriguing. It is fascinating to trace the path from the unique vision of an individual collector to the global aspirations of the present-day museum.

In order to do justice to the extraordinary quality of this collection, its contemporary part will be presented in an additional space on the ground floor of the neighbouring Kunstmuseum: “The Guggenheim: Contemporary Art". Recent acquisitions, including several large-scale works commissioned for the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin, illustrate the museum’s ongoing commitment to ground-breaking contemporary works by artists as diverse as Nam Jun Paik, Jeff Koons, Matthew Barney, and Rachel Whiteread.

The overall space for the exhibition in both institutions is about 8000 square metres.

The Guggenheim Architecture (G)
Following the tradition established by the famous Frank Lloyd Wright-designed museum building, erected between 1946 and 1959 on New York’s Fifth Avenue, Thomas Krens, director of the Guggenheim Foundation since 1988, has commissioned many of the world’s leading architects, among them Frank O. Gehry, Zaha Hadid, and Rem Koolhaas, to design additional Guggenheim museums in Europe and the U.S. These designs (for projects both built and unbuilt) mark a shift in the perception and role of contemporary museum architecture.

Particularly noteworthy are Gehry’s building in Bilbao (opened in 1997) and designs for projected museums in Rio de Janeiro by Jean Nouvel, in Taichung, Taiwan by Hadid and, most recently, for a museum in Guadalajara, Mexico by Enrique Norten. In a separate show that will be held on the ground floor of the atrium hall of the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle from 25 August - 12 November 2006, architectural models and plans of 23 projects and competitions illustrate the radical development of, international museum architecture and exhibition design as reflected in the Guggenheim’s own pioneering past and present.

Museumsmeile Bonn
Friedrich-Ebert-Allee 4 - Bonn

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