The Guggenheim

Completed in the 1950s


I took this photograph in March 2006 when I visited New York. The structure of the Museum hasn't changed greatly since it was first bulit as you can see.
The building was designed by the architect Frank Llyod Wright, who also designed Fallingwater (mentioned in design theory, year one)

From the street, the building looks approximately like a white ribbon curled into a cylindrical stack or a shell.

Internally, the viewing gallery forms a gentle spiral from the ground level up to the top of the building. Paintings are displayed along the walls of the spiral and also in viewing rooms found at stages along the way.

Most of the criticism of the building has focused on the idea that it overshadows the artworks displayed within, and that it is particularly difficult to properly hang paintings in the shallow windowless exhibition niches that surround the central spiral.

To be honest I did not go to the museum particularly for a certain exhibition but to see inside the building itself. I don't believe that museums should be plain but should be a piece of art in itself.