Who designed the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York?

Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

The museum grew from Solomon R. Guggenheim's collection of non-objective art, championed by curator Hilla von Rebay. In 1943, Rebay and Guggenheim asked Wright to create a building that would provide a new setting for modern art. Wright accepted and developed a radically different design from the conventional boxlike museum.

The completed building, opened in 1959, is organized around a vast central rotunda and a continuous spiral ramp. Visitors traditionally take an elevator to the upper level and descend the ramp while viewing works along the way. Wright compared the flowing form to organic shapes, and the building is often associated with his organic architecture.

The museum was initially established in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting and adopted its current name in 1952. Wright died six months before the building opened. Although the museum is commonly called the Guggenheim, that name can refer to the institution, its foundation, or the distinctive Fifth Avenue building itself.