The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice presents from April an exhibition that reconstructs the patron's London experience with her Guggenheim Jeune space. It brings together nearly 100 key works from that period, including pieces by Kandinsky, Pollock, and Dalí, showing how that gallery promoted avant-garde art in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.
The exhibition setup: between historical archives and digitization 🖼️
The exhibition uses an LED lighting system with adjustable color temperature to preserve works on paper and canvas. Each piece has been documented with high-resolution photogrammetry, creating digital twins accessible from an app. The display cases feature humidity control and CO2 sensors, while a central touchscreen allows browsing the Guggenheim Jeune catalog, including the collector's original letters.
The modern patron's dilemma: collecting art or investing in crypto? 💸
Peggy sold works by unknown artists for prices that would make any NFT investor cry today. The exhibition shows that, while speculators buy and sell pixelated JPEGs, she bet on canvases that would later be worth millions. Perhaps the moral is that, to be a good collector, you need an artistic eye and not just a crypto wallet.