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Peggy Guggenheim at her home in Venice, 1961.
If you travel to Venice, make sure you visit the Peggy Guggenheim Museum on the Grand Canal. The elegant home houses the art collection of Peggy Guggenheim (1989-1979). Born into the wealthy Guggenheim family in New York City, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who died when the Titanic sank in 1912. With the roughly $2.5 million inheritance she received in 1919 at 21 years old, she began to devote her time and money to befriending artists and building a collection of art that includes Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst (the surrealist artist who was her husband for some years), Jackson Pollock, Agnes Martin and many others.
Beginning in 1951, Peggy opened her house (the 18th century Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, which she acquired several years earlier) and collection in Venice to the public during the summer months. Now open year-round as a museum, the Palazzo has become one of the most visited attractions in Venice. The museum, which has an intimacy that larger museums often lack, houses one of the most impressive collections of European and American modern art in the world.
RESOURCES:
To learn about Peggy Guggenheim, see Peggy Guggenheim,
Confessions of an Art World Addict (1960)
For museum information, visit guggenheim-venice.it.
Annapolis Home Magazine
Vol. 8, No. 6 2017