Peggy Guggenheim Collection

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is a modern art museum on the Grand Canal in the Dorsoduro sestiere of Venice, Italy. It is one of the most visited attractions in Venice. The collection is housed in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, an 18th-century palace, which was the home of the American heiress Peggy Guggenheim for three decades. She began displaying her private collection of modern artworks to the public seasonally in 1951. After her death in 1979, it passed to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, which eventually opened the collection year-round.

The collection includes works of prominent Italian futurists and American modernists working in such genres as Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract expressionism. It also includes sculptural works.

The collection is principally based on the personal art collection of Peggy Guggenheim, a former wife of artist Max Ernst and a niece of the mining magnate, Solomon R. Guggenheim. She collected the artworks mostly between 1938 and 1946, buying works in Europe "in dizzying succession" as World War II began, and later in America, where she discovered the talent of Jackson Pollock, among others. The museum "houses an impressive selection of modern art. Its picturesque setting and well-respected collection attract some 400,000 visitors per year", making it "the most-visited site in Venice after the Doge's Palace". Works on display include those of prominent Italian futurists and American modernists. Pieces in the collection embrace Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract expressionism. During Peggy Guggenheim's 30-year residence in Venice, her collection was seen at her home in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni and at special exhibitions in Amsterdam (1950), Zurich (1951), London (1964), (1966), Copenhagen (1966), New York (1969) and Paris (1974).

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