The Guggenheim, New York

What surprised me the most about the Guggenheim is how much I loved it. Studying museum architecture, the  Guggenheim comes up often and it is rarely for positive reasons. One of the first museums to really go all out with its design (something all it's branches across the globe are now known for), its been highly criticized for its wasted space and curved walls. Both certainly present problems for exhibition designers and installers, and on paper, the museum's design doesn't look very promising for its purpose. I fully intended to feel these negative effects when I visited and was more than shocked to find it was truly one of the most beautiful, enticing spaces I'd ever been in. This effect didn't necessarily hit me all at once. Certainly, the high central ceiling and curving walls are impressive from the ground floor but I enjoyed walking through every part of that building and having all those little experiences add up to one extraordinary one.  It sort of made me feel like when my family stayed in hotels when I was little, which was rare. It was so exciting, so many new hidden rooms and halls to run up and down, all so very different from staying in a familiar place. This museum didn't feel like a normal museum with normal exhibition space; it made me want to run up and down it's halls and explore. Maybe running isn't something you want to encourage in a museum but excitement and exploration certainly are.

On a more serious note, the continuous winding hall that makes up a large portion of it's permeant exhibition space and does some what limit the amount of art they can show at any one time. I didn't at all feel like it was lacking material though, especially given the style of early modern art they collect, which is busy by nature. The white walls and dividers allowed deeper contemplation of the pieces in each small subsection. Additionally, I found it meditative to be able to walk round and round the whole building and never need to change rooms or floors. It was also interesting that you could see most of the building from any given point as well as all the people mulling around it. It made it feel eventful and busy from a distance. Look down from the highest point was fun and terrifying.

The lack of distinct "floors" might be frustrating for some visitors. The map was confusing (mainly because it is hard to accurately depict a spiral in a simple 2 dimensional way) and it could be hard to orient yourself within the building. All the other exhibition spaces and the stairs and elevator were accessible from at least one point on any given "loop." They had a bathroom on every single floor which was nice considering the floor weren't that big and they likely could have gotten away with far fewer.

The spiraled space is referred to as the rotunda. The additional exhibition space is referred to as the tower and is fairly small (left of the image). The first floor is a large gift shop and there is a second smaller gift shop located at the very top of the spiral (the space to the right of the rotunda on the map, not in the tower). The third floor is a cafe but it also had small body of work exhibited in it by a contemporary artist (Julien Bismuth) when I visited which I thought was awesome. Additionally, there is an educational space in the basement that I entirely missed on my visit. So that's a huge negative in terms of signage (I also somehow missed the huge gift shop on right when you walk in, which I attribute to the distraction of the spiraling rotunda to the left) but it IS great that they have an entire floor of exhibit space for educational exhibits. However, it's not that great if people (like me) completely miss it. 

The Guggenheim's exhibition handout was a nice compacted little booklet with the exhibits, their location, and a short description of them on each page. They were printed per "season" though so not all the exhibits in the booklet were actually on display, some had already closed or hadn't opened. There were lots of other hand outs for the individual exhibits as well. I collected a "program guide" for the exhibit "Tales of Our Time" and a sheet listing all the fabrics used in a piece in the exhibit. Unfortunately the fabric handout does not have the piece's title or artist which sort of defeats the point of being able to take it home. All the information was also available on a plaque with samples of the fabric so the handout wasn't even the only available source. 

I personally really enjoyed the quality of all the art there. I HIGHLY recommend visiting "America" the solid 18k golden toilet installed in one of the bathrooms there. You can actually use it, completely unsupervised.  It was designed specifically for that "space" in the Guggenheim by Mauirizo Cattelan and is labeled as an "on-going" exhibit. I hope they never remove it! I spoke with the security guard that was in charge of letting people in and out of the bathroom and he told me they clean the toilet every 20 minutes. 

Some people I visited with did not enjoy the modernist art on display very much. It makes up a majority of the work on display in the rotunda (currently at least) and so they didn't enjoy the museum as much, though they still enjoyed the space and experience as a whole. Only one person I spoke to found the museum architecture to be a waste of place in the way I was expecting too. I was surprised to hear how strongly they felt this way because I'd thoroughly enjoyed every moment of my visit and could have spent even longer just wandering the building. I know I already professed my love in the beginning of this post but I can't recommend a better museum if you're looking for an artistic experience from beginning to end. 

Other things to consider: on their website, the museum states the entire museum is wheel chair accessible save for a small gallery on the second floor called the "High Gallery." They offer print outs of the work at the front desk to make up for it. However, I wonder how difficult controlling a wheel chair on the spiral ramp would be. Not impossible to be sure, but certainly much more inconvenient than flat floors. Unfortunately, I suppose that's just a result of the design that couldn't have been avoided without creating an entirely different type of space.