Guggenheim

Finding 25: Installation Photograph, Museum of Non-Objective Painting

July 7, 2010

This 1948 installation view shows the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation's collection at the first museum site, then located on 24 East Fifty-Fourth Street in New York. The exhibition showcased paintings by Vasily Kandinsky and Rudolf Bauer—nonobjective artists favored by Hilla Rebay—and artists at the core of the museum’s collection. The paintings in the museum were hung close to the floor, as shown in the photograph. Rebay wanted the viewer to have an intimate experience with the paintings, and believed the low placement could help foster that experience.

—Martha Horan, archives assistant

Finding 24: Dear Mr. Messer

June 30, 2010

“As you have experienced yourself, it is a curious sensation to address someone by one’s own name, especially in an instance where this is not to be taken for granted and where everything but the middle initial matches.” This statement by Guggenheim Director Thomas Messer was made in response to a letter he received in 1970 inquiring if he might be a relative of another Thomas Messer. This letter in 1970 was one of two letters Messer received from others with the same name. In 1962 a nine year old Thomas Messer, who shared the middle initial M., wrote to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum with a similar inquiry. The letter provides some insight into Messer’s ancestry and family history.

—Peter Asch, archives assistant

Finding 23: Josef Albers: A Retrospective Panel Discussion

June 22, 2010

From March 24–May 29, 1988, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presented a retrospective of Josef Albers's work. The exhibition later traveled to Baden-Baden and Berlin, Germany, and Pori, Finland. In conjunction with the exhibition, the museum hosted a panel discussion on April 5 that consisted of panelists Peter Halley, Donald Judd, Paul Overy, and Harry Seidler and moderator Nicholas Fox Weber. While speaking of the relationship between Albers’s theories and his work, one panelist gave the following anecdote:  “When you refer to Albers’s scale and his European sense of scale, it made me think of a time when a critic visited Albers in Connecticut in the early 1970s. The critic had observed that for years Albers had created the works in his Homage to the Square series in sizes ranging from 16 x 16 inches to 40 x 40 inches, and [the critic] said ‘Professor Albers, in 1962 you suddenly began to work in the size of 48 x 48, and I wondered if this was your reaction as a European to the vaster scale of life in America or in fact to the American attempt to conquer space and reach larger dimensions?’ And Albers looked at him and said ‘young man that was the year we got a bigger station wagon.’”

As part of this grant project, the lecture will be digitized and available for public research later this year. In addition to painting, Albers taught at Black Mountain and then at Yale University. Among his students were Robert Rauschenberg, Susan Weil, and Eva Hesse.

—Martha Horan, archives assistant

Finding 22: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Humanitarian Aid Efforts

June 16, 2010

Europe’s slow recovery from the destructive forces of World War II led to years of shortages of food, clothes, and other basic necessities across the continent. In the immediate postwar period, Americans were encouraged to donate money to relief efforts or send aid to their friends and relatives abroad. The Bircham Newton Company, whose order form is pictured here, was one of several companies that specialized in sending overseas packages to Europe. Each of the companies offered customers the ability to purchase packages with varying contents; the packages offered by Bircham Newton featured food products. Some companies named their packages, such as Bircham Newton’s “The Peter Pan,” “The Kitchen Triumph,” and “The Emergency Provision.”

From the end of the war until Hilla Rebay stepped down from her position as Director in 1952, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation sent dozens of packages to Europe each year, such as those described here. The Hilla Rebay records contain several registers that document Rebay’s efforts. Each register includes information on the overseas package companies used, the contents of packages, and the beneficiaries. The beneficiaries were typically needy artists, art collectors, and critics, as well as the families of artists and museum employees. The records also include a number of letters of thanks.

— Pete Asch, archives assistant

Finding 21: Calder Airplanes

May 28, 2010

In 1973 Braniff International Airways commissioned Alexander Calder to paint a DC 8 jet that was scheduled to fly between North and South America. Initially trained as an engineer and best known for his kinetic sculptures, or mobiles, Calder was a fitting choice for such an undertaking. In preparation for the project, Calder created numerous fiberglass models, each painted with different colors and designs. Aspects from each model were then incorporated into the final painting on the plane, which bore Calder’s signature rather than the Braniff logo. Five of these models were on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum from August 9 to October 7, 1973. The installation photograph shows them hanging in the rotunda, suspended from wire attached to the dome.

—Amanda Brown, National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) grant intern