“To live in Venice or even to visit it means that you fall in love with the city itself. There is nothing left over in your heart for anyone else.” This well-known sentiment, from an essay by Peggy Guggenheim in a 1962 book by Michelangelo Muraro (Invitation to Venice), expresses the American collector’s feelings about Venice, where, after a nomadic life between Europe and the United States, she decided to make her home in 1948. A year later she acquired Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal, where she both lived and exhibited her collection of modern art, opening the palazzo to the public each summer from 1951 to 1979. At Easter 1980, not long after Peggy Guggenheim’s death (23 December 1979), Palazzo Venier reopened to the public for the first time under the auspices of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York.
Today the museum has doubled in size and has increased its annual number of visitors to 380,000, placing it among the twenty most-visited museums in Italy. Since 1985 the museum has organized approximately 80 temporary exhibitions. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection looks at the next thirty years with optimism, and thanks all those who have generously helped us through the first thirty, such as the Regione del Veneto, the members of our Advisory Board, the Banca del Gottardo, now BSI in Lugano, and Intrapresæ Collezione Guggenheim. Above all we are indebted to Peggy Guggenheim’s genius, and to the supreme quality of her collection of great modern art.”
Philip Rylands
Director, Peggy Guggenheim Collection
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| photo Andrea Sarti/CAST1466 |
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photo Andrea Sarti/CAST1466 |
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