Solomon R. Guggenheim, guided by the young German artist Baroness Hilla Rebay von Ehrenwiesen, begins to acquire a collection of Modern paintings.
			Guggenheim's growing collection—including masterworks by Marc Chagall, Robert Delaunay, Lyonel Feininger, Albert Gleizes, Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Fernand Léger, and László Moholy- Nagy—is installed in his private apartment at the Plaza Hotel, New York.
			The rapid expansion of the collection leads to the formation of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Incorporated in New York State, the foundation is endowed to operate a museum.
			The Museum of Non-Objective Painting, with Rebay as director, opens in rented quarters at 24 East 54th Street after a long search for a space in which to house and exhibit the collection.
			Guggenheim commissions architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design a permanent structure to house the museum.
			Wright's designs for a spiral-shaped building begin to emerge. The spiral motif represents the architect's interpretation of ancient Mesopotamian ziggurats. The choice of this formal prototype may reflect Rebay's desire to build a "temple of spirit."
			The first complete set of plans for the new building is finished. The exhibition building is conceived as one curvilinear,poured-concrete ramp spiraling upward almost one hundred feet to a glass skylight. Set into a low rectangular base, the grand cantilevered spiral, located at the south end of the block, is attached to a smaller circular service structure on the north, known as the Monitor Building.
			The Museum of Non-Objective Painting moves from 54th Street to a renovated townhouse at 1071 Fifth Avenue.
			Wright redesigns the entire complex, streamlining the structure. Revisions include the elimination of a terrace garden and walkway at the base of the dome, a simplification of the Monitor Building, the addition of a photography department, and a general widening of the ramps.
			Ground is broken on the tract of land acquired by the Guggenheim Foundation, located between 88th and 89th streets and facing Fifth Avenue. The museum is relocated to temporary quarters in a townhouse at 7 East 72nd Street.
			Construction of the 1071 Fifth Avenue building. Director James Johnson Sweeney demands several interior changes to accommodate the needs of the growing institution, including increased office and library space, an artificial lighting system as opposed to Wright's design for natural illumination, and the elimination of sloping walls. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opens to the public on October 21, 1959, six months after Wright's death and ten years after the death of Guggenheim.
			The museum decides to construct an annex behind the existing Frank Lloyd Wright structure to house administrative and storage facilities. The building addition is designed by William Wesley Peters, Wright's son-in-law.
			Construction of the annex. Although designed as a six-story structure, only four floors are constructed due to financial limitations. Because the administration recognizes that future expansion is inevitable, the foundation of the annex is built with the capacity to support a ten-story building.
			The Wright building undergoes further structural alterations with the addition of a restaurant and bookstore on the ground floor. To accommodate these additions, the driveway between the rotunda and the Monitor Building is enclosed and the sculpture garden along 89th Street is transformed into an outdoor café.
			Peggy Guggenheim, Solomon's niece, transfers her collection, which is especially strong in Surrealist work, and the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal in Venice, to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. It is agreed that the works of art in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection will remain in Venice.
			The Aye Simon Reading Room, designed by Richard Meier, is established in a meeting-room space off the second ramp in the rotunda of the Wright building. A keyhole-shaped entrance to the Reading Room is created.
			In an attempt to relieve the constraints imposed on the exhibition of the permanent collection by the spatial limitations of the Wright building, a small gallery—called Pioneers of Twentieth-Century Art—is established in an area on the fourth floor of the Monitor Building formerly occupied by the director's office.
			Further responding to the Museum's physical limitations, which make it increasingly difficult to exhibit large-scale contemporary art and to house adequately the growing professional staff, the foundation decides to proceed with an expansion program. Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects is engaged to do a study of the museum's needs and to furnish a design.
			The existing four-story Annex is demolished, save for the foundation and the second and fourth floors, to prepare for construction of the new addition, which begins late in the year.
			The museum undergoes an extensive renovation. The addition of a nine-story limestone-faced building, designed by Gwathmey Siegal and based on a background structure proposed by Wright in 1951, provides space for administrative offices and four floors of galleries capable of accommodating large-scale art. The Wright building has been restored to its "pre-opening" condition, and it opens to the public in its entirety for the first time on June 28, 1992.
			The Guggenheim Museum SoHo, designed by Arata Isozaki, is established in a building at 575 Broadway. The museum includes extensive gallery space, as well as a retail store, public areas, and administrative offices. It opens to the public on June 28, 1992.
			The Guggenheim Museum SoHo becomes a center for multimedia and high-technology arts. It also showcases other forms of contemporary art and the museum's postwar permanent collection.
			Two years of discussions result in an alliance between the government of the Basque Country and the Guggenheim Foundation, and construction of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao takes place. Designed by Frank Gehry, the museum, located in the Basque region of northern Spain, opens to the public on October 19, 1997. Exhibited are works from the Solomon R. Guggenheim collection, as well as several site- specific commissions completed for the new museum by contemporary artists.
			The Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, designed by Richard Gluckman and located on the Unter den Linden, opens to the public on November 7. The single, generously proportioned gallery is located in an elegant 1920s building, in the Berlin headquarters of Deutsche Bank. The exhibitions program focuses on commissions of major works by international artists as well as loan shows organized by Guggenheim curators.