Solomon R. Guggenheim

American businessman and art collector (1861–1949)

Solomon Robert Guggenheim (February 2, 1861 – November 3, 1949) was an American businessman and art collector. He is best known for establishing the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Guggenheim was born into a wealthy mining family, and he founded the Yukon Gold Company in Alaska, among other business interests. He began collecting art in the 1890s, and he retired from his business after World War I to pursue art collecting. He eventually focused on modern art under the guidance of artist Baroness Hilla von Rebay, creating an important collection by the 1930s and opened his first museum in 1939.

Guggenheim was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, son of Barbara (Myers) and Meyer Guggenheim, and brother of Simon, Benjamin, Daniel, and five other siblings. He was of Swiss Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. Guggenheim was a student in Switzerland at the Concordia Institute in Zürich.

In 1891, he turned around the Compañia de la Gran Fundición Nacional Mexicana. In 1930, they visited Wassily Kandinsky’s studio in Dessau, Germany, and Guggenheim began to purchase Kandinsky's work. The same year, Guggenheim began to display the collection to the public at his apartment in the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Guggenheim's purchases continued with the works of Rudolf Bauer, Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger, and László Moholy Nagy. Under Rebay's guidance, Guggenheim sought to include in the collection the most important examples of non objective art available at the time, such as Kandinsky's Composition 8 (1923), Léger's Contrast of Forms (1913) and Robert Delaunay's Simultaneous Windows (2nd Motif, 1st Part)'' (1912). By the early 1940s, the museum had accumulated such a large collection of avant garde paintings that the need for a permanent building to house the art collection had become apparent. In 1943, Guggenheim and Rebay commissioned architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design a new museum building. These Rothschilds were not related to the Rothschild banking family. Solomon and Irene's children were Eleanor May (1896–1992; later Lady Castle Stewart after her marriage to Arthur Stuart, 7th Earl Castle Stewart), Gertrude (1898–1966) and Barbara Guggenheim (1904–1985). Guggenheim died in 1949 on Long Island, New York.

In addition to the New York Museum, the Guggenheim Foundation operates, among other things, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, which was established by Guggenheim's niece, Peggy Guggenheim.