Art of This Century

Art of This Century was a landmark New York City gallery established in 1942 by Peggy Guggenheim that played a pivotal role in promoting Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Cubism, Constructivism, and Dada among artists, critics, and collectors. The gallery occupied a commercial space on 57th Street during the height of World War II and immediately after, serving as a nexus for émigré artists, American modernists, and influential dealers, curators, and museums. Its innovative exhibition design, daring program, and networked relationships with institutions, publications, and patrons reshaped postwar art markets, critical discourse, and museum acquisition practices.

History and Founding

Founded in 1942 by Peggy Guggenheim in New York City, the gallery emerged amid the wartime migration of European artists and intellectuals from Paris, Berlin, Milan, and Venice to the United States. Guggenheim partnered with advisers and collaborators including Julien Levy, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Galahad patrons, and figures from the Museum of Modern Art circle, while engaging critics and curators such as Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, André Breton, and Maurice Berezovsky. The gallery’s founding intersected with major wartime and postwar institutions and events like the influx of artists connected to Surrealist exhibitions, the relocation of collections from Galerie Pierre and other European galleries, and the careers of émigré curators who later joined Whitney Museum of American Art and Art Institute of Chicago. Legal, financial, and logistical ties linked Guggenheim’s project to collectors such as Alfred Barr, James Thrall Soby, Florine Stettheimer, and contemporary patrons who had connections to Smithsonian Institution, Carnegie Museum of Art, and private collectors in Boston and Philadelphia.

Architecture and Gallery Spaces

The gallery at 30 West 57th Street was transformed by designer Fredrick Kiesler and advisers with references to theatrical staging used by Ballets Russes and exhibition innovations seen at Galerie Maeght, Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice), and avant-garde salons in Paris. Kiesler’s architectural interventions created distinct rooms and display devices that referenced spatial experiments by László Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, Vladimir Tatlin, and stage designers who had worked with Bertolt Brecht and Max Reinhardt. The gallery’s mirrored walls, tilted planes, and modular vitrines echoed display strategies later examined by curators at Tate Modern, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art, and the National Gallery of Art. Lighting and circulation patterns drew from theatrical lighting schemes pioneered in productions by Diaghilev and exhibition precedents such as shows organized by Alfred Stieglitz, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and dealers like Samuel Kootz.

Exhibitions and Artists

Artworks by émigrés and Americans were shown in solo and group exhibitions that introduced artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Arp, Yves Tanguy, Alexander Calder, Franz Kline, Stuart Davis, Roberto Matta, René Magritte, Pablo Picasso, Adolph Gottlieb, Joseph Cornell, William Baziotes, Isamu Noguchi, Paul Klee, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Man Ray, Georges Braque, Kurt Seligmann, David Smith, Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, John Graham, Giorgio de Chirico, Louise Nevelson, Arman, Jean Dubuffet, Giorgio Morandi, Egon Schiele, Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera. Landmark installations combined painting, sculpture, and objet trouvé, and shows with themes drawn from Surrealist Manifesto associations and automatic writing circles created cross-references to earlier European exhibitions at Galerie Pierre, Salon des Indépendants, and postwar retrospectives later organized by Museum of Modern Art and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice). Special exhibitions featured collaborations with magazines and critics from The New York Times, Partisan Review, Art News, and curatorial exchanges with galleries such as Peggy Guggenheim Galleries (Venice), Julien Levy Gallery, and Kootz Gallery.

Curatorial Philosophy and Influence

The gallery’s curatorial practice foregrounded experimental display, championing risk-taking artists and promoting dialogues between European avant-garde traditions and emergent American practices associated with Abstract Expressionism, Surrealism, and postwar formalism championed by critics like Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg. Peggy Guggenheim’s acquisitions policy and exhibition choices influenced institutional collecting at Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Tate Gallery, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and regional museums in Chicago, Cleveland, and San Francisco. The gallery fostered mentorship and professional networks connecting artists, dealers, patrons, and critics including Guggenheim family members, Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice) trustees, and curators who later shaped biennials and retrospectives at Venice Biennale, Documenta, São Paulo Art Biennial, and national galleries. Its approach to installation design prefigured later conceptual frameworks employed by curators at Tate Modern, MoMA PS1, and university galleries affiliated with Columbia University, Yale University, and Princeton University.

Reception and Legacy

Contemporaneous reception ranged from acclaim by collectors and critics linked to Alfred H. Barr Jr. and Sidney Janis to controversy among conservative commentators and rival dealers in New York City. The gallery’s legacy endures in scholarship, museum collections, and art markets: many exhibitions and artists first promoted there became subjects of monographs, catalogue raisonnés, and retrospectives at institutions including Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, National Gallery of Art, and university presses. Archival materials and oral histories connected to the gallery inform studies at repositories like Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Getty Research Institute, and university special collections at Yale University and Harvard University. The innovations in display, patronage, and transatlantic networks established by the gallery continue to be cited in curatorial training, museum policy debates, and histories of 20th-century art practice and exhibition-making.

Category:Defunct art galleries in New York City