Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection

This full-rotunda exhibition celebrates the institution’s extensive twentieth-century holdings through the intervention of six contemporary artists, all of whom have contributed to shaping the museum’s history with their own pivotal solo shows. 

Coinciding with the sixtieth anniversary of the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright–designed building, this will be the first artist-curated exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum. Curated by Paul Chan (b. 1973, Hong Kong), Cai Guo-Qiang (b. 1957, Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China), Jenny Holzer (b. 1950, Gallipolis, Ohio), Julie Mehretu (b. 1970, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia), Richard Prince (b. 1949, Canal Zone, Panama), and Carrie Mae Weems (b. 1953, Portland, Oregon), this presentation brings together collection highlights and rarely seen works from the turn of the century to 1980 (along with some surprises orchestrated by the artist-curators). Creating unique and critical dialogues with the Guggenheim’s history and the history of modern and contemporary art, these artists will each interpret the collection through their own individual perspectives. 

The exhibition will include over one hundred paintings, sculptures, and works on paper that engage with the cultural discourse of their time—from the utopian aspirations of early modernism to the formal explorations of midcentury abstraction to the sociopolitical debates of the 1960s and ’70s, with each curated section providing a distinctive opportunity for new interpretations of the collection. As a whole, the exhibition will provide a refreshing opportunity for the museum to critically reflect on its own history.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.