The Guggenheim Museum opened on October 21 in 1959, on New York City’s Fifth Avenue. The museum was established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting. It adopted its current name after the death of its founder Solomon R. Guggenheim in 1952.
In 1959, the museum moved to its current building, a landmark work of 20th-century architecture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The cylindrical building is wider at the top than at the bottom and was conceived as a “temple of the spirit”.