Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. (at 89th Street)
New York, NY 10128
Phone: 212-423-3500
Employees: 350
Director: Richard Armstrong
Website: http://www.guggenheim.org
Career Site
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a landmark New York City museum with its cylindrical-shaped buiding on Fifth Ave. in Manhattan at 89th Street. It is open everyday of the week except Thursday.
The Guggenheim features modern art collections from the 20th and 21st centuries. General admission ticket prices are $22 for adults, $18 for seniors and students.
The museum is funded by ticket sales, events and private donations.
The Guggenheim Foundation reported total operating revenues of $60.5 million in 2010 with a surplus after expenses of $3.88 million. The Foundation reported net assets of $90.5 million at the end of 2010.
Attendance at the Guggenheim Museums across the globe was 2,433,659 in 2010 and was 1,004,865 at the museum in New York.
There are sister museums in Venice, Italy; Bilboa, Spain; and Berlin, Germany.
History
In 1929, wealthy American industrialist Solomon R. Guggenheim at the age of 66 begins to form a large collection of important modern paintings by artists such as Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Marc Chagall. He is guided in this pursuit by a young German artist and theorist, Baroness Hilla Rebay von Ehrenwiesen. Rebay introduces Guggenheim to Kandinsky in his Dessau studio and Guggenheim purchases several paintings and works on paper; he will eventually acquire more than 150 works by this seminal artist.
In the 1930s, Guggenheim's growing collection is installed in his private apartment at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Small exhibitions of newly acquired works are held there intermittently for the public.
In 1937, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is formed for the "promotion and encouragement and education in art and the enlightenment of the public." Chartered by the Board of Regents of New York State, the Foundation is endowed to operate a museum or museums. Rebay is appointed its Trustee and Curator.
In 1943, Guggenheim and Rebay commission Frank Lloyd Wright to design a permanent structure to house the Museum of Non-Objective Painting. Over the next 15 years, Wright will make some 700 sketches, and six separate sets of working drawings for the building. Between 1944 and 1951, the foundation acquires three tracts of land between East 88th and 89th streets on Fifth Avenue, but construction is delayed until 1956 for various reasons, foremost among them the death of Solomon R. Guggenheim in 1949 and postwar inflation.
The new Guggenheim Museum opens on October 21, 1959, six months after the death of Frank Lloyd Wright.
A three-year restoration project of the museum's interior was completed in 1992. Another three-year restoration project of the exterior of the building was finished in 2008.
Benefits
The Guggenheim offers a competitive salary and excellent medical, dental, life, disability, and retirement plan coverage. The staff also enjoys generous vacation, sick leave and personal days, access to a variety of cultural institutions, discounts to museum stores, and a stimulating and collegial work environment.
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