Peggy Guggenheim Collection
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is a small museum on the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy. It is one of several museums of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.
Containing principally the personal art collection of Peggy Guggenheim (1898–1979), a former wife of artist Max Ernst and a niece of mining magnate Solomon R. Guggenheim, this museum houses a somewhat smaller and more idiosyncratic collection than the other Guggenheim Foundation museums. However, the works on display include those of prominent American modernists and Italian futurists. Pieces in the collection embrace Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract expressionism. These include notable works by Picasso, Dalí, Magritte, Brancusi (including a sculpture from the Bird in Space series) and Pollock.
The collection is housed in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, an unfinished 18th century palazzo which was never built past the ground floor level. In one room, the museum also exhibits a few paintings by her daughter Pegeen Vail. In the courtyards between the main buildings are sculpture gardens containing an extensive collection of works.
Its most famous (or notorious) exhibit is the 1948 bronze "The Angel of the City" by Marino Marini, positioned at the front of the palazzo, facing the Grand Canal. It is rumoured that this nude and clearly excited horse rider was originally possessed of a screw-in demountable penis so that it could be removed in order to avoid offending passing VIPs. So many of the bronze phalluses were stolen (although this may be an urban myth), that the current member has been welded to the Angel's body.
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is the most important museum in Italy for European and American art of the first half of the 20th century. Philip Rylands is the museum's current director.
