Guggenheim Museum, New York
****
The Guggenheim collection is housed in an incredible purpose-built building by Frank Lloyd Wright whose interior spirals upwards to create a very attractive gallery space. It’s best to start at the top though, unfortunately for us, the spiral part of the building contained an exhibition we wouldn’t have chosen to see (but still had to pay for!) rather than the permanent collection. Paintings from the "permanent collection" are rotated regularly and are restricted to the annexes from the spiral floors. The collection on display is reasonably small but excellent. It focuses on Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and early 20th Century European art with a substantial collection of Kandinsky’s. One particularly pleasant surprise for me was four excellent paintings by Franz Marc, one of my favourite painters. Well worth visiting for the collection and building though I will probably check out what the exhibition is before making a further visit.
Seen by me: 27.10.04 (with Naomi)