Guggenheim New York

Guggenheim Museum New York (Sean Pavone/Dreamstime)

The Guggenheim New York (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), is one of the world’s great modern art collections. The striking modernist building was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. You can walk up the inviting spiral rotunda, or take the elevator to the top and unwind. This UNESCO World Heritage Site is a sly metaphor on the modernist museum experience. The Guggenheim uses its magnificent rotunda as a backdrop for performing arts.

Latin Culture at The Guggenheim Museum

JUNE 2026

Contemporary Pop Art

Guggenheim Pop is an exhibition of iconic artists of the 1960s Pop Art Era with recent acquisitions by contemporary artists such as Maurizio Cattelan (Italian), Lucía Hierro (Dominican American), and Josh Kline (American) who speak with a similar conceptual voice today. It’s at the Guggenheim New York in Manhattan’s Upper East Side; from June 5, 2026 to January 10, 2027. $30. 🇩🇴 🇮🇹 🇵🇭 🇺🇸

Cattelan’s “America” (2016), a solid gold toilet, is an iconic statement about American consumerism. It’s a toilet fit for a king. I remember seeing it installed for use at the Guggenheim. One of the existing versions sold last November for $12.1 million dollars to Ripley’s Believe It or Not! More recently, his “Comedian” (2019), a banana duct-taped to a wall went viral globally. It’s interactive because you can let the banana rot, or eat it, and tape up another one. Versions of the piece sell for over a hundred thousand dollars. 🇮🇹

Lucía Hierro is Dominican American from the Dominican neighborhood in Washington Heights/Inwood, who currently works in the South Bronx. She lets her inner Andy Warhol or Claes Oldenburg loose in the bodega (corner store) which is the center of Latin community life in New York City and even more so in the Dominican Republic (where they are called colmados). The bodega/colmado is the heart of Caribbean neighborhoods. I go to the colmado all the time. I usually buy something to be polite, but I really go to talk to people and watch the rhythms of life. Hierro makes impressive soft sculptures based on the Dominican lifestyle from simple, inexpensive materials. Some of her sculptures and paintings look like a typical bodega/colmado purchase. Island Dominicans don’t buy packages of things, they buy one bouillon cube, one onion, a piece of chicken, part of an auyama (Caribbean pumpkin), and some parsley, just enough to make the next meal. Then there are the dominos and the plantains, the cheese, rice, and habichuelas (beans), all the things you see in a typical Dominican home. An interesting connection with the Guggenheim in some of Hierro’s work is the Dominican salami. That is standard Dominican food, but its origin was the Jewish community that founded the Dominican beach town of Sosua in 1940. Jewish salami didn’t spoil in the Caribbean climate, so it has become standard Dominican food, even though its origins are Jewish, like the Guggenheims. The deeper you look, the more you find that we are all wonderfully mixed together. 🇩🇴

Josh Kline is a Filipino American artist with Jewish, Russian, Austrian, and Hungarian roots. He also works in sculpture a lot from his own cultural framework. A lot of the work is dystopian as if to say that we have traded the joys of real life for endless streams of junk. 🇵🇭

All of these artists play with consumerism in its various forms and beg the question, “What is Art?” If a Campbell’s soup can is art, then so is a banana, plantain, or discarded couch. All the art is filled with ironic humor. Perhaps that’s the essence of Pop Art.

Free Art & Block Party

The Museum Mile Festival features free museum admission and a Fifth Avenue Block Party with family entertainment; on Tuesday, June 14, 2026, from 6-9pm. FREE.

JANUARY 2026

Tap Dance Festival

The Uptown Rhythm Dance Festival closes with Works & Process excerpts from Japanese tap dancer Naomi Funaki’s new work “Ikigai” (purpose of life) and “Yarin” (root, encounter, dialogue) by Kukai Dantza, a Spanish Basque contemporary dance company featuring traditional Basque dancer Jon Maya and flamenco dancer Andrés Marín, with live music by contemporary Basque musician Julen Achiary. It’s at the Guggenheim New York in Manhattan’s Upper East Side; on Sunday, March 8, 2026 at 7pm. From $25. 🇯🇵 🇪🇸

Naomi Funaki is an award-winning, internationally-recognized, New York dancer. Japan has a vibrant tap dance community that fuses tap and Japanese traditions. In a traditional society that values conformity, dance’s freedom of expression is cherished. In fact, Japan is often considered the second of home another rhythmic dance: flamenco. It also has a strong Argentine tango scene, and great swing dancers too.

It’s currently believed that the Basque people are Indigenous Iberians who were isolated from later migrations by their mountainous region. The flamenco heartland is among the Roma people of Andalusía in Southern Spain. While flamenco is Spanish, its roots are all along the road from Northern India where the Roma people originated as traveling court entertainers. So “Yarin” is about the cultural conversation within Spain, but also with the wider world.

Both works are very relevant as the United States celebrates our 250th Anniversary this July. Unless you are Native American, our families are all immigrants somewhere along the line. People have been migrating since we got two feet. At times we have been welcoming, and at times we have been terribly cruel. In this current moment, all of us are faced with the choice of who we are and who we want to be. In New York City, we live, love, and work together. I suspect all of these artists would answer Rodney King’s famous question, “Can we all get along?” with a resounding “Yes.”

The Uptown Rhythm Dance Festival is co-produced by the Guggenheim New York, 92nd Street Y, and Dormeshia’s Ladies in the Shoe Tap Conference.

PAST FEATURES

Pia Camil: Here Comes the Sun 🇲🇽 🇧🇷
Josef Albers in Mexico Shows his Inspirations from Aztec, Maya, & Inca Art 🇲🇽 🇵🇪 🇺🇸
Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim 🇫🇷 🇷🇴 🇪🇸
Maurizio Cattelan: “America” says a lot with few words 🇮🇹

History

The collection was originally Solomon R. Guggenheim’s personal collection. It focuses on French modernism. He began showing it to the public from his apartment in the Plaza Hotel. The Museum was founded in 1939 and moved to the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright building in 1959. The Guggenheim fortune was made in mining and smelting, including Colorado silver and Alaskan gold.

Looking at exhibitions at the Guggenheim, it’s worth remembering that the Modern Art period was a time of transition from the strict codes of the past, to the freer forms of today. It was a time of great experimentation as artists broke down the traditional boundaries of art. Transitions are life’s most memorable moments and there is a lot of memorable art here.

Thannhauser Collection shows masters of modern art. It’s the collection of a famous Jewish art dealer who had to flee Germany during World War II, first to Paris, and then to New York City. Those art collections are often in the news. This is one of them. It’s amazing. Pablo Picasso’s “Woman with Yellow Hair” (Femme aux cheveaux jaunes) from 1931 stands out. It’s one of the striking paintings of his young mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter. It’s surprising simple and expressive at the same time. 🇫🇷 🇪🇸