New York’s Museum of Non-Objective Painting opened in 1939, launching the institution that became the Guggenheim Museum.
The museum was established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to display nonrepresentational art, especially works from Guggenheim’s collection of European modernism. Its first home was a former automobile showroom at 24 East 54th Street in Manhattan.
The opening preceded the museum’s famous Fifth Avenue building by two decades. Frank Lloyd Wright’s purpose-built Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opened in 1959, after Wright’s death. The earlier institution therefore should not be confused with the present building.
The 1939 opening also explains why the museum’s early identity was tied to “non-objective” art, a term then used for abstract art. The collection later broadened substantially to include painting, sculpture, photography, installation, and other forms of modern and contemporary art.