New York City - The Guggenheim Museum Celebrates Its 50th Birthday with upcoming events as follows:

Program Highlights

 • Free Day - Oct. 21
On October 21, exactly 50 years after the opening of the museum's historic Fifth Avenue home, the public is invited to celebrate the Guggenheim's golden anniversary with free admission, tours offered in several languages, and a roster of special education programs, including many family-friendly activities.

 • Empire State Building Tribute - October 21
On October 21, the Empire State Building will be lit Guggenheim red in honor of the museum's 50th birthday. Throughout October, the Empire State Building's display windows in the lobby will feature the museum.

On-Going Exhibitions

The Thannhauser Collection
The newly restored Thannhauser Gallery reopened to the public in 2008 with a selection of canvases, works on paper, and sculpture bequeathed to the museum by the important art dealer and collector Justin K. Thannhauser (1892–1976). Representing the earliest works in the museum's collection, the Thannhauser holdings include significant works by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, and Vincent van Gogh. Thannhauser's commitment to supporting the early careers of such artists as Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Franz Marc, and to educating the public about modern art, paralleled the vision of the Guggenheim Foundation's originator, Solomon R. Guggenheim. Among the works Thannhauser gave are such incomparable masterpieces as Van Gogh's Mountains at Saint-Rémy (Montagnes à Saint-Rémy, July 1889), Manet's Before the Mirror (Devant la glace, 1876), and close to 30 paintings and drawings by Picasso, including his seminal works Le Moulin de la Galette (autumn 1900) and Woman Ironing (La Repasseuse, spring 1904). This reinstallation of more than 30 works of the Thannhauser Collection offers visitors the opportunity to reacquaint themselves with some of the iconic images that comprise this celebrated collection.

Kandinsky - Through January 13, 2010
No artist epitomizes the character of the Guggenheim Museum quite like Russian-born artist Vasily Kandinsky. His history is closely intertwined with that of the institution, and the Guggenheim has collected his work in-depth since its founding. Presented to coincide with the museum's 50th Anniversary, this full-scale retrospective of Kandinsky's oeuvre is the first in the United States since 1985, when the Guggenheim completed its trio of groundbreaking exhibitions on the artist's life and work in Munich, Moscow, and Paris. The Guggenheim; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich - the three institutions that own the greatest concentration of the artist's work in the world - have partnered to assemble this presentation of nearly 100 paintings from their renowned collections and from significant loans from private and public holdings. Complemented by more than 60 works on paper from the collections of the Guggenheim and Hilla von Rebay Foundations, Kandinsky offers a chronological survey of the artist's work through a selection of his most important canvases, including examples from his series of Improvisations, Impressions, and Compositions, and reexamines the geographic and time-based divisions traditionally applied to his work. The unprecedented collaborative efforts of the Guggenheim, Pompidou, and Lenbachhaus have brought together works that have rarely traveled. The New York presentation is organized by Tracey Bashkoff, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions, with Karole Vail, Assistant Curator.

Gabriele Munter And Vasily Kandinsky, 1902–1914 - A Life In Photographs - Through January 13, 2010
Gabriele Münter and Vasily Kandinsky, 1902–1914: A Life in Photographs presents German artist Gabriele Münter's photographs (along with a selection taken by her companion, Russian-born artist Vasily Kandinsky), recording the years they lived, traveled, and worked together between 1902 and 1914. Private and documentary images from their life in Germany and their travels in Europe and northern Africa, as well as portraits taken with friends and colleagues offer a fascinating glimpse into the artists' private and public personas. Gabriele Münter and Vasily Kandinsky, 1902–1914: A Life in Photographs is organized by the Sackler Center for Arts Education at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Paired: Gold, Felix Gonzalez-Torres And Roni Horn - Through January 6, 2010
Bringing together two important works from the permanent collection for the first time, this exhibition illuminates the profound artistic dialogue between Roni Horn and Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Suspended from the ceiling, the new acquisition "Untitled" (Golden) (1995) by Gonzalez-Torres will act as a site of passage, a shimmering curtain of golden beads opening onto Horn's delicate gold floor piece, Gold Field (1980–1982). The paired works reflect a critical engagement with the legacy of Minimalism and the emotive possibilities of form. This exhibition is organized by Nancy Spector, Chief Curator.

Intervals: Kitty Kraus - Through January 6, 2010
German artist Kitty Kraus has been invited to exhibit her work for the second installment of Intervals, a new contemporary art series designed to showcase experimental projects by emerging artists and reflect the spirit of today's most innovative practices. This exhibition is organized by Nancy Spector, Chief Curator, and Katherine Brinson, Assistant Curator.

The Deutsche Bank Series At The Guggenheim, Anish Kapoor: Memory - October 21 through March 28, 2010
With the inauguration of the Deutsche Guggenheim in 1997, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Deutsche Bank launched a unique and ambitious program of contemporary art commissions that has enabled the Deutsche Guggenheim to act as a catalyst for artistic production. Anish Kapoor: Memory is the 14th project to be completed since the program's inception and is the foundation's first collaboration with the artist. The commission is traveling to New York after its Berlin debut, demonstrating Kapoor's ability to create a site-specific work that engages with two very different exhibition spaces. Kapoor was born in 1954 in Bombay, India. He has lived in London since the early 1970s and quickly rose to prominence in the 1980s. Best known for his explorations of the concept of the void and his use of color and scale, he has since redefined contemporary sculpture. Memory is a remarkable new work in industrial Cor-Ten steel that transforms the galleries through shifts in physical, mental, and architectural scale. This exhibition is organized by Sandhini Poddar, Assistant Curator of Asian Art.

Tino Sehgal - January 29, 2009 through March 10, 2010
London-born, Berlin-based artist Tino Sehgal constructs staged situations that often defy the traditional contexts of museum and gallery environments, focusing on the fleeting gestures and social subtleties that define lived experience rather than the material aspects of conventional art making. His singular practice has been informed by extensive studies in dance and economics, yielding entirely ephemeral works that consist only of the interactions among their participants and are not visually documented. Organized as part of the Guggenheim's 50th-anniversary celebrations, Sehgal will present two major projects in the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed rotunda, each representing a pivotal part of his practice. The first, entitled Kiss, takes the form of a choreographed interaction between two participants, transforming the ground floor of the rotunda into an arena for spectatorship. In the second work, This Progress, a succession of interlocutors directly engages visitors in an increasingly sophisticated verbal interaction throughout the spiraling rotunda. Together these works expand the concept of what constitutes a contemporary art object, offering the viewer a direct engagement with the realization of the work presented. This exhibition is organized by Nancy Spector, Chief Curator, assisted by Nat Trotman, Associate Curator, and Katherine Brinson, Assistant Curator.

Contemplating The Void: Interventions In The Guggenheim Museum Rotunda, An Anniversary Benefit Event - Through May 13, 2010
This exhibition celebrates the catalytic power of the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed museum's spiraling rotunda on the occasion of the building's 50th Anniversary. Since its opening in 1959, the building has served as an inspiration for invention, challenging artists and architects to react to its eccentric, organic design. The central void of the rotunda has elicited many unique responses over the years, which have been manifested in both site-specific solo shows and memorable exhibition designs. With that history in mind, the Guggenheim invited approximately 200 artists, architects, and designers to imagine their dream interventions in the space. The exhibition will feature their renderings of these visionary projects in a salon-style installation that will emphasize the rich and diverse range of inspired proposals. This exhibition is organized by Nancy Spector, Chief Curator, and David van der Leer, Assistant Curator for Architecture and Design.

Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance - Through September 5, 2010
Much of contemporary photography and video seems haunted by the past, by ghostly apparitions that are reanimated in reproductive media, as well as in live performance and the virtual world. By using dated, passé, or quasi-extinct stylistic devices, subject matter, and technologies, this art embodies a melancholic longing for an otherwise unrecuperable past. Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance examines the myriad ways photographic imagery is incorporated into recent practice and in the process underscores the unique power of reproductive media while documenting a widespread contemporary obsession, both collective and individual, with accessing the past. The works included in the exhibition range from individual photographs and photographic series, to sculptures and paintings that incorporate photographic elements, and to videos, both on monitors and projected, as well as film, performance, and site-specific installations. Drawn primarily from the Guggenheim Museum collection, Haunted will feature recent acquisitions, many of which will be exhibited by the museum for the first time. Included in the show will be work by such artists as Marina Abramovi?, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Sophie Calle, Gregory Crewdson, Tacita Dean, Stan Douglas, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Roni Horn, Zoe Leonard, Robert Rauschenberg, Cindy Sherman, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Jeff Wall, and Andy Warhol. A significant part of the exhibition will be dedicated to work created since 2001 by younger artists. This exhibition is curated by Jennifer Blessing, Curator of Photography, and Nat Trotman, Associate Curator.

Visitor Information
Admission: Adults $18, students/seniors (65+) $15, members and children under 12 free. Admission includes audio guide tour. Museum Hours: Sunday to Wednesday, 10 a.m. to 5:45 p.m.; Friday, 10 a.m. to 5:45 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 7:45 p.m. On Saturdays beginning at 5:45 p.m., the museum hosts Pay What You Wish. Closed Thursday. For general information call 212 423 3500 or visit guggenheim.org.