Peggy Guggenheim Collection

The palace

The palace was left unfinished and sits unusually low on the Grand Canal

The collection is in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, an 18th-century palace that is sometimes mistaken for a modern building. Lorenzo Boschetti designed it. It was left unfinished, and has an unusually low elevation on the Grand Canal. Peggy Guggenheim bought it in 1949.

The buying

Most of the collection was bought between 1938 and 1946

Peggy Guggenheim, a niece of the mining magnate Solomon R. Guggenheim and a former wife of the artist Max Ernst, bought most of the works as World War II began. Later, in America, she discovered the talent of Jackson Pollock.

The opening

She opened her home to the public from April to October in 1951

In 1951 the palazzo, its garden and her collection were opened to the public from April to October. She gave the palazzo and the 300-piece collection to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1976, which reopened it in April 1980. It has been open year-round since 1985.

Doubled

Since 1993 the museum has doubled in size

Since 1993 the museum has doubled in size, from 2,000 to 4,000 square meters. A new entrance and booking office opened in 2003 to cope with the increasing number of visitors, who reached 350,000 in 2007.

4,000 sq mthe museum's size now, up from 2,000 in 1993

The Biennale

The foundation also runs the American pavilion at the Venice Biennale

Since 1985 the United States has selected the foundation to operate the U.S. Pavilion of the Venice Biennale, an exhibition held every other summer. In 1986 the foundation bought the Palladian-style pavilion, built in 1930.