With the inauguration of the Deutsche Guggenheim in 1997, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Deutsche Bank launched a unique and ambitious program of contemporary art commissions that has positioned the Guggenheim as a catalyst for artistic production. The participants in the series to date include both established and younger artists of various nationalities, working in a diversity of mediums, from paintings and photographs to large-scale sculptural and video installations.

The 350-square-meter space, designed by American architect Richard Gluckman, and located in Deutsche Bank’s offices on Unter den Linden, in the former Eastern Berlin, hosts a dynamic modern and contemporary art exhibition program which frequently draws from the extensive art holdings of both organizations. Focused, scholarly loan exhibitions such as No Limits Just Edges: Jackson Pollock Works on Paper (2005) and Divisionism/Neo-Impressionism: Arcadia and Anarchy (2007) have premiered in Berlin before traveling to other museums in the Guggenheim network.

Perhaps most uniquely, however, the Deutsche Guggenheim commissions a new body of work by select contemporary artists, which are debuted in Berlin in exhibitions. Organized in collaboration with Guggenheim Museum curators, the exhibitions often reveal a new facet in the artist's practice. Over time, many of these works have been shown in New York and Bilbao and have entered the Guggenheim Foundation’s permanent collection.

A number of the commissions represent a continuation of the Guggenheim Foundation’s existing commitments to particular artists, while others have afforded the opportunity to establish new working relationships. The twelve artists who have participated in the series to date comprise various nationalities, genders, and generations, and work in a diversity of media: John Baldessari, Hanne Darboven, William Kentridge, Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter, James Rosenquist, Andreas Slominski, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Bill Viola, Phoebe Washburn, Lawrence Weiner, Jeff Wall, and Rachel Whiteread.

Through these commissions, the Deutsche Guggenheim adapts the role of patron and promoter of contemporary art. In the words of former Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum director Lisa Dennison, the program has enabled Deutsche Bank and the Guggenheim Museum “to break free of our traditional roles in the arts—the corporation as sponsor and the museum as repository” and to “act as a catalyst for artistic production."