“Highly expressive” and “intensely personal” perfectly describe Frank Gehry’s design for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, which opened in 1997 and quickly became one of the most famous buildings in the world. With its swirling forms and its facade of titanium, glass, and limestone, Gehry’s Guggenheim dances gracefully between architecture and sculpture. Taken together, the Wright and Gehry museums have come to represent the unique character of the Guggenheim in the popular mind. This has led some observers to speak of a Guggenheim “brand” that is inextricably linked to architecture, not just art.
The Guggenheim Foundation's relationship to architecture and promotion of architectural investigations of new museum forms stem from its unique history. In 1969, Peggy Guggenheim decided to bequeath her art collection and palazzo on the Grand Canal in Venice to the foundation established by her uncle thirty-two years earlier; she died a decade later, and the Guggenheim was immediately transformed from a New York-only institution into a binational entity that would only continue to grow.