Celebrating 60 years of art patron Peggy Guggenheim in Venice, Italy

Susan Spano’s Postcards From Rome

She was an heiress who collected art, interesting people and lovers.

She arrived in Venice in 1948 with a passel of paintings to show–Picassos, Miros, Chagalls, Dalis and Klees-that ultimately found a home at the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal, what’s now known as the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

This year the museum is celebrating the 60th anniversary of her arrival in the Lagoon City with a film series and a landmark exhibition of early modern American art called “Coming of Age: American Art from the 1850s to the 1950s.”

Those who want to know more about the woman behind the museum should consult Mary Dearborn’s “Peggy Guggenheim: Mistress of Modernism” and short stories by Mary McCarthy like “The Cicerone.”

–Susan Spano, Los Angeles Times staff writer

[Photo: Art patron Peggy Guggenheim at the Museum of Modern Art in 1942 from Associated Press]

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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 13, 2008 at 7:00 am by Susan Spano and is filed under Arts & Culture, Europe, Italy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.