Peggy's Collection

Canal Grande

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is located in the Dorsoduro neighborhood of Venezia. It was the last privately owned building on Canal Grande and is now the site of one of the most important collections of Modern art in Europe.

Peggy was born into a wealthy New York family in 1898 and after her father died on the Titanic she came into a sizable fortune, and thus had the means to support many artists. She did not get the idea to buy art until she had an affair with Samuel Beckett who supported Modern art and referred to it as a living thing. With the help of non other than Marcel Duchamp, in the late 1930's she began a "diet" of a painting a day. She opened a gallery in London for a year giving several artists their first shows. (Kandinsky!) She had a sizable collection by the time she had to flee Europe during WWII, and acquired even more works as payment for helping other artists escape. (She even bought a sculpture the day the Nazis invaded France.) She helped Max Ernst escape and at the end of the year they were married. (Although it didn't last long, I think maybe he wanted a visa and she wanted paintings, who knows?) The Lourve snubbed her collection as not worthy to be hidden in their storage so she was forced to hide it all in a barn in the south of France.

Palazzo Venier dei Leoni is the small white building on the right. It was supposed to be the largest built on the Canal in the 1750s, but only the ground floor was completed. It is thought that another wealthy family prevented it's construction, not wanting their view to be obstructed.

After the war, Peggy successfully shipped her collection back to New York in crates labeled "household goods". She opened a museum in NYC, where she also discovered and supported artists. (Pollock!)

Peggy moved to Venice in 1949, and is now buried in the giardino of the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni which was her home, along with several of her dogs. They were like children to her, in fact one of them was even named Pegeen after her actual daughter, who died of a pill overdose. (Would you ever name your dog in memoriam of your child? This should give you a small glimpse of the crazy that was Peggy) Until her death in 1979, she made Venezia her own(she was declared an honorary citizen in 1962). She had a private gondola and wore earrings designed by Calder and Tanguy, sunglasses by Melcarth. In a nutshell she was a nut, but a very important one.

Peggy's collection included over 250 works of art, 50 of which are considered masterpieces. So she was also a smart nut.

Redeeming a Visit

Wednesday was our last day in London and we had to pack in as much tourism as we could. We started out at the British Museum, which is easily one of the best museums in the world, ignoring the fact that they looted a lot of their treasures from their colonies, of course. I had a decidedly better visit than the last time I was there in 2005.(I was with the Girl Scouts who had just landed after a 7 hour flight without sleep. The six of us dredged through the galleries like a pack of zombies, and finally fell asleep out front around one of the huge columns while my Mom went to the gift store. We woke up to some Asian tourists taking our picture. Not in the top ten experiences of my life.) So anyway, this visit was fantastic compared to that.

There's a head from Easter island (Someday I'll get there)

What museum would be complete without statues from Antiquity?

And the obvious favorite, the Rosetta Stone! I don't remember it being so small.

Mummies!

Golden Goat.

And whatever the hell this is.

La Pecora Platinata

Friday night was my first time curating a gallery exhibition. It was from 6-8pm at a garage near the Colosseum. I had to wake up at 7 to get ready and buy the refreshments and then meet the rest of the people in my group to set up the art work. We had to clear out some junk, cover up things with sheets, and hang the art work. It took all day but we basically transformed that place and it looked amazing. The only problem was that the DVD wouldn't play to show the video art, but the show will be running for 2 weeks so hopefully they can get that fixed soon. The theme of the show was that the outsider is the new insider. La Pecora Platinata means The Platinum Sheep, thus the typical black sheep outsider becomes reinvented into something valuable and interesting. There were 9 artists represented:

Logan de la Cruz

Omino71 and Mr. Klevra

Gabriele Lungarella

Zamo (2 artists who are heavily influenced by Basquiat)

Olga Dubatova

Hide Ashizawa

We also had a local Roman graffiti artist, UNO, come and perform by adhering his signature posters on the wall:


Overall the show was successful and everyone seemed to have enjoyed the art and the atmosphere. I am very proud of the five of us for pulling this off.