My motto was 'Buy a picture a day' and I lived up to it.

July 27, 2017 7:59 AM

We all know about the Guggenheim museums but what of the founder Peggy Guggenheim?
In the 1920s, Peggy went travelling in Europe, discovered Paris and stayed there, on and off, for 22 years. From the start, her predominant interests were art and sex.
From her NYT obituary: One of her grandfathers, she said, was born "over a stable in Bavaria, and my other grandfather was a peddler."
posted by adamvasco (8 comments total)

Peggy’s education in modern art began in New York in 1920. She was 22, and had inherited from her dead father (who went down with the Titanic in 1912) enough money to supply her, via a trust fund, with an income of $22,500 a year.

For those wondering, that's the equivalent of about $275,000 today.

Also, what's with all the pipes |scattered through the |article? The paragraph starting "A year later, she bought the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni" is particularly rife with them.
posted by jedicus at 8:16 AM on July 27, 2017

I've sometimes wondered what kind of conversations she and Isabella Stewart Gardner could have had if their adult lives had overlapped.
posted by praemunire at 8:23 AM on July 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

I wish my art and sex stipend was that high.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 8:35 AM on July 27, 2017 [13 favorites]

I can die happily having seen the Joseph Cornell's at her house in Venice.
posted by humboldt32 at 9:30 AM on July 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

The result, a fantastic, spiral-curved building now called the Samuel R Guggenheim Museum, New York, opened to gawping tourists on 21 October 1959, the first permanent museum to be built (rather than converted from a private house) in the United States.

Huh? I'm sure that there were hundreds of museums built as museums in the US by that time.
posted by octothorpe at 9:30 AM on July 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

Her eponymous museum in Venice is amazing.
posted by Mental Wimp at 11:42 AM on July 27, 2017

Art Addict, 2015's Peggy Guggenheim documentary is worth watching if you have any interest in this scene.
posted by octobersurprise at 12:34 PM on July 27, 2017

Wanted to chime in re her collection in Venice. I did an internship there right after college because it was one of the only "jobs" an American could get in Italy (meager stipend) as they don't really hire non-EU. I wanted to live there to become fluent in Italian. ANYWAY it's really something to be that close to a Jackson Pollock, and the museum itself is not very large, so it has a more intimate feel. The gift shop sells little enamel pins that are replicas of her signature glasses. It's pretty neat!
posted by Kemma80 at 5:11 PM on July 27, 2017 [1 favorite]