365 Days of Art: October 20 – Peggy Guggenheim Opens Art of This Century Gallery

Peggy Guggenheim at Art of This Century

October 20, 1942

Peggy Guggenheim opens the Art of This Century art gallery at 30 W. 57th Street in New York.

A press release calls gallery a “research laboratory for new ideas” that will “serve the future instead of recording the past”. Guggenheim specializes in the work of European modernists and Surrealists like Picasso, Mondrian, and Klee, as well as emerging American artists like Joseph Cornell. Later, she’ll become known for launching the careers of the Abstract Expressionists, particularly Jackson Pollock.