What was the original name of the collection that became the Guggenheim Museum?

The collection’s original museum name was the Museum of Non-Objective Painting.

Solomon R. Guggenheim’s collecting interests shifted toward European avant-garde and abstract art after he met artist Hilla von Rebay in 1926. Rebay promoted “non-objective” art—abstract work that did not represent recognizable objects—and became a crucial adviser to Guggenheim.

In 1937, Guggenheim established the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Two years later, its first public venue opened at 24 East 54th Street in Manhattan under Rebay’s direction. The museum displayed works by artists including Wassily Kandinsky, Rudolf Bauer and Albert Gleizes.

The institution was renamed the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1952, after Guggenheim’s death in 1949. Frank Lloyd Wright had already been commissioned in 1943 to design a permanent building for the growing collection. That famous spiral-shaped museum opened in New York in 1959, but the later building’s name should not be projected backward onto the original 1939 institution.