FADDISH...: 'A TEMPLE OF SPIRIT'...

“I want a Temple of the Spirit" said the baroness Hilla Rebay von Ehrenwiesen (1980-1967), to the architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

The baroness was a notable woman abstract painter in the early 20th century. After immigrating to the Unites States in 1927, she may be best known for helping Solomon R. Guggenheim collect the art that formed the basis of the Salomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and for select Frank Lloyd Wright, to design the new museum, which became a modernist Icon in New York.

Solomon R. Guggenheim, (1861-1949) a cooper magnate and enlightened patron of arts, was already the proud owner of a collection of Old Masters and had been introduced to modern when he meet the baroness in 1926, who had opened his eyes to the work of Delaunay, Gleizes, Chagall, Kandisky and Bauer.

“I do not want to found another museum such as now exist in New York…no such building as is now customary for museums could be appropriate for this one" he said.

In June 1943, Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) received a letter from Hilla Rebay, the art advisor to Solomon R. Guggenheim, asking the architect to design a new building to house Guggenheim's four-year-old Museum of Non-Objective Painting.
Wright made no secret of his disenchantment with Guggenheim's choice of New York for his museum: "I can think of several more desirable places in the world to build his great museum," Wright wrote in 1949 to Arthur Holden, "but we will have to try New York." To Wright, the city was overbuilt, overpopulated, and lacked architectural merit.

The Architect, who was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as the "Greatest American architect of all times, drew up plans which focused in the importance of natural light. As well as the glass dome over a central court, which figured in all the early proposals, Wright recommended a strip running along the walls, providing a constant source of daylight, modeled in his own studio in Wisconsin. Another concept which figured prominently in Wright’s plans was that of an open space, without partitions, which a wheelchair could traverse from one end to another. In these original plans, Wright wrote the words “Constant Ramp”, the idea of a building with a 'spiral' born.

The 'spiral' design recalled a nautilus shell, with continuous spaces flowing freely one into another. Even as it embraced nature, Wright's design also expresses his unique take on modernist architecture's rigid geometry.

The building is a symphony of triangles, ovals, arcs, circles, and squares. Forms echo one another throughout: oval-shaped columns, for example, reiterate the geometry of the fountain and the stairwell of the Than Hauser Building. Circularity is the leitmotif, from the rotunda to the inlaid design of the terrazzo floors.

Frank Lloyd Wright, Hilla Rebay, Solomon Guggenheim at the unveiling of the model for the Guggenheim Museum, August, 1945.

It took sixteen to complete this controversial project, to the first plans to the final building. This was due to a violent confrontation with the building authorities and with the director of the foundation, James Johnson Sweeney, who succeed Baroness Rebay in 1952, after Guggenheim died in 1949, and who felt that Wright’s proposals might cause problems in terms of conserving and hanging the collections.
The Guggenheim Museum opened October 21 of 1959, and ironically the Baroness was not invited to the inaugural ceremony. She never set food inside the Guggenheim Museum.

The Guggenheim Museum is essentially made up of five major private collections:

Solomon Guggenheim’s Collection of Non- Objective Paintings (Kandinsky, Bauer, Moholy-Nagy, Leger, Delaunay, Chagall, and Modigliani).
Justin K. Thannhauser’s Collection of impressionist and Modern Art (including a large number of Picasso’s early works).
Karl Nierendorf’s German Expressionist Painting (including over 100 works by Paul Klee).
Katherine S. Dreier’s Historic Avant – Garde Paintings and Sculptures (Brancusi, Mondrian).
Count Giuseppe Panzadi Biumo’s Collection of American “Minimal Art” from the 1960s and 1970s (Robert Ryman, Dan Flavin). Currently the Museum owns more of 5,000 paintings, sculptures and sketches ranging from the Impressionist to present day.

This “Temple of the Spirit” is totally monastic white, like a Sanctuary, y besides keeping art work, some times the museum became a big background, like a movie theater, where it’s projecting, the most creative videos, like in October 21 of 2010 when it took place, the YouTube Play Biennial of Creative Video, when the Guggenheim seemed like a big Temple in moving. Watch the following video...

In the following video The Guggenheim looked like a opera theater where the ramps, were like the 'palcos' in a teather, full of people, watching the spectacular show of videos and artists, when they were celebrating the YouTube play Biennial, event which was streamed live to a worldwide audience at youtube.com/play.