Peggy Guggenheim Collection

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is an art museum on the Grand Canal in the Dorsoduro sestiere of Venice, Italy. It is one of the most visited attractions in Venice. The collection is housed in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, an 18th-century palace, which was the home of the American heiress Peggy Guggenheim for three decades. She began displaying her private collection of modern artworks to the public seasonally in 1951. After her death in 1979, it passed to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, which opened the collection year-round from 1980.

The collection includes works of prominent Italian futurists and American modernists working in such genres as Cubism, Surrealism and abstract expressionism. It also includes sculptural works. In 2017, Karole Vail, a granddaughter of Peggy Guggenheim, was appointed the director of the collection, succeeding Philip Rylands, who led the museum for 37 years.

The collection is principally based on the personal art collection of Peggy Guggenheim, a former wife of artist Max Ernst and a niece of the mining magnate, Solomon R. Guggenheim. She collected the artworks mostly between 1938 and 1946, buying works in Europe "in dizzying succession" as World War II began, and later in America, where she discovered the talent of Jackson Pollock, among others. The museum "houses an impressive selection of modern art. Its picturesque setting and well-respected collection attract some 400,000 visitors per year", making it "the most-visited site in Venice after the Doge's Palace". Works on display include those of prominent Italian futurists and American modernists. Pieces in the collection embrace Cubism, Surrealism and abstract expressionism. During Peggy Guggenheim's 30-year residence in Venice, her collection was seen at her home in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni and at special exhibitions in Amsterdam (1950), Zürich (1951), London (1964), Stockholm (1966), Copenhagen (1966), New York (1969) and Paris (1974).

Among the artists represented in the collection are: from Italy, Giorgio de Chirico (The Red Tower, The Nostalgia of the Poet) and Gino Severini (Sea Dancer); from France, Georges Braque (The Clarinet), Jean Metzinger (Au Vélodrome), Albert Gleizes (Woman with Animals), Marcel Duchamp (Sad Young Man on a Train), Fernand Léger (Study of a Nude and Men in the City), Francis Picabia (Very Rare Picture on Earth); from Spain, Salvador Dalí (Birth of Liquid Desires), Joan Miró (Seated Woman II) and Pablo Picasso (The Poet, On the Beach); from other European countries, Constantin Brâncuși (including a sculpture from the Bird in Space series), Max Ernst (The Kiss, Attirement of the Bride), Alberto Giacometti (Woman with Her Throat Cut, Woman Walking), Arshile Gorky (Untitled), Wassily Kandinsky (Landscape with Red Spots, No. 2, White Cross), Paul Klee (Magic Garden), René Magritte (Empire of Light) and Piet Mondrian (Composition No. 1 with Grey and Red 1938, Composition with Red 1939); and from the US, Alexander Calder (Arc of Petals) and Pollock (The Moon Woman, Alchemy). In one room, the museum also exhibits a few paintings by Peggy's daughter Pegeen Vail Guggenheim.

In addition to the permanent collection, the museum houses 26 works on long-term loan from the Gianni Mattioli Collection, including images of Italian futurism by artists including Umberto Boccioni (Materia, Dynamism of a Cyclist), Carlo Carrà (Interventionist Demonstration), Luigi Russolo (The Solidity of Fog) and Severini (Blue Dancer), as well as works by Giacomo Balla, Fortunato Depero, Ottone Rosai, Mario Sironi and Ardengo Soffici. In 2012, the museum received 83 works from the Rudolph and Hannelore Schulhof Collection, which has its own gallery within the building.

The collection is housed in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, which Peggy Guggenheim purchased in 1949. Although sometimes mistaken for a modern building, it is an 18th-century palace designed by the Venetian architect Lorenzo Boschetti [it]. The building was unfinished, and has an unusually low elevation on the Grand Canal. The museum's website describes it thus:

Palazzo Venier dei Leoni's long low façade, made of Istrian stone and set off against the trees in the garden behind that soften its lines, forms a welcome "caesura" in the stately march of Grand Canal palaces from the Accademia to the Salute.

The palazzo was Peggy Guggenheim's home for thirty years. In 1951, the palazzo, its garden, now called the Nasher Sculpture Garden, and her art collection were opened to the public from April to October for viewing. Her collection at the palazzo remained open during the summers until her death in Camposampiero, northern Italy, in 1979; she had donated the palazzo and the 300-piece collection to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1976. The foundation, then under the direction of Peter Lawson-Johnston, took control of the palazzo and the collection in 1979 and re-opened the collection there in April 1980 as the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.