Peggy Guggenheim Collection

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is an art museum on the Grand Canal in the Dorsoduro sestiere of Venice, Italy.

The collection is housed in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, an 18th-century palace, which was the home of the American heiress Peggy Guggenheim for three decades.

In 2017, Karole Vail, a granddaughter of Peggy Guggenheim, was appointed the director of the collection, succeeding Philip Rylands, who led the museum for 37 years.

She collected the artworks mostly between 1938 and 1946, buying works in Europe "in dizzying succession" as World War II began, and later in America, where she discovered the talent of Jackson Pollock, among others.

Its picturesque setting and well-respected collection attract some 400,000 visitors per year",[1] making it "the most-visited site in Venice after the Doge's Palace".

[3] During Peggy Guggenheim's 30-year residence in Venice, her collection was seen at her home in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni and at special exhibitions in Amsterdam (1950), Zürich (1951), London (1964), Stockholm (1966), Copenhagen (1966), New York (1969) and Paris (1974).

[4] Among the artists represented in the collection are: from Italy, Giorgio de Chirico (The Red Tower, The Nostalgia of the Poet) and Gino Severini (Sea Dancer); from France, Georges Braque (The Clarinet), Jean Metzinger (Au Vélodrome), Albert Gleizes (Woman with Animals), Marcel Duchamp (Sad Young Man on a Train), Fernand Léger (Study of a Nude and Men in the City[5][a]), Francis Picabia (Very Rare Picture on Earth); from Spain, Salvador Dalí (Birth of Liquid Desires), Joan Miró (Seated Woman II) and Pablo Picasso (The Poet, On the Beach); from other European countries, Constantin Brâncuși (including a sculpture from the Bird in Space series), Max Ernst (The Kiss, Attirement of the Bride), Alberto Giacometti (Woman with Her Throat Cut, Woman Walking), Arshile Gorky (Untitled), Wassily Kandinsky (Landscape with Red Spots, No.

2, White Cross), Paul Klee (Magic Garden), René Magritte (Empire of Light) and Piet Mondrian (Composition No.

[7] In addition to the permanent collection, the museum houses 26 works on long-term loan from the Gianni Mattioli Collection, including images of Italian futurism by artists including Umberto Boccioni (Materia, Dynamism of a Cyclist), Carlo Carrà (Interventionist Demonstration), Luigi Russolo (The Solidity of Fog) and Severini (Blue Dancer), as well as works by Giacomo Balla, Fortunato Depero, Ottone Rosai, Mario Sironi and Ardengo Soffici.

The museum's website describes it thus: Palazzo Venier dei Leoni's long low façade, made of Istrian stone and set off against the trees in the garden behind that soften its lines, forms a welcome "caesura" in the stately march of Grand Canal palaces from the Accademia to the Salute.

After the Foundation took control of the building in 1979, it took steps to expand gallery space; by 1985, "all of the rooms on the main floor had been converted into galleries ... the white Istrian stone facade and the unique canal terrace had been restored" and a protruding arcade wing, called the barchessa, had been rebuilt by architect Giorgio Bellavitis.

The disputes concern, in part, the difference in language between Guggenheim's unconditional 1976 deed of gift to the foundation, a 1969 letter, and a 1972 version of her will.