Guggenheim Museum, New York City - Philatelic Photographs on Waymarking.com

In 2005, the United States issued a souvenir sheet of twelve stamps entitled “Masterworks of Modern American Architecture” with each stamp showing a different building. The very first stamp on the pane shows Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York. It is one of the three stamps in the set that show the interior of the building rather than the exterior. (The exterior of the Guggenheim Museum can be seen in the background of another US postage stamp issued in 1966 and honoring Frank Lloyd Wright.)

Solomon R. Guggenheim was born in 1861 into a wealthy mining family. After retiring from his mining business in 1919, he devoted himself to art collecting eventually putting his collection on public display. His first official venue was called the “Museum of Non-Objective Painting” and was located in a rented facility in New York City. As his art collection grew, Guggenheim sought a more permanent venue for its display. In 1943, noted architect Frank Lloyd Wright was awarded the commission to design the new museum building. Due to a variety of reasons, construction didn’t begin until 1953 and took almost six years to complete. Neither Guggenheim nor Wright lived to see the project completed. Solomon R. Guggenheim passed away in 1949 and Frank Lloyd Wright died just six months prior to the museum’s grand opening.

The museum’s galleries are in the form of a large spiral expanding upwards and topped off with a glass dome. The image on the stamp captures this aspect of the design by showing the view looking up through the large central atrium toward the glass dome. (Of course, the stamp doesn’t show that large sculpture by Chinese artist, thinker and self-described “shaman” Chen Zhen called “Precipitous Parturition” which is suspended from the ceiling in my photo – that was part of a special exhibit on display at the time of my visit.)

From the get-go this building was considered controversial for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the fear that the building’s design would one-up the art it contained. I suppose that this could be as much an issue with the art as with the architecture, nevertheless, over the years it has become a commonplace to build art museums that are architecturally significant. For evidence, one needs to look no further than this souvenir sheet where three of the twelve buildings featured are art museums!

Stamp Issuing Country: United States Date of Issue: 19-May-2005 Denomination: 37 cents Color: multicolored Stamp Type: Single Stamp Relevant Web Site: [Web Link]

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