Editing Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (section)

==== Design process ====
In 1943, Rebay and Guggenheim wrote a letter to [[Frank Lloyd Wright]] asking him to design a structure to house and display the collection.<ref name=Pfeiffer5>{{harvnb|Pfeiffer|1995|ps=.|p=5}}</ref>{{sfn|Vail|2009|p=333}} Rebay thought the 76-year-old Wright was dead, but Guggenheim's wife Irene Rothschild Guggenheim knew better and suggested that Rebay contact him.<ref>{{harvnb|Stern|Mellins|Fishman|1995|ps=.|pp=808–809}}</ref> Wright accepted the opportunity to experiment with his "organic" style in an urban setting, saying that he had never seen a museum that was "properly designed".<ref name=NYCLint7>{{harvnb|Landmarks Preservation Commission Interior|1990|ps=.|p=7}}</ref> He was hired to design the building in June 1943.<ref name=Pfeiffer5/><ref name=Stern807>{{harvnb|Stern|Mellins|Fishman|1995|ps=.|p=807}}</ref><ref name=Stern809>{{harvnb|Stern|Mellins|Fishman|1995|ps=.|p=809}}</ref> He was to receive a 10 percent [[Commission (remuneration)|commission]] on the project, which was expected to cost at least $1 million.<ref name=Stern809/> It took him 15 years, more than 700 sketches and six sets of working drawings to create and complete the museum, after a series of difficulties and delays;<ref>{{cite web |title=Guggenheim Architecture |url=https://www.guggenheim.org/history/architecture |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160501233616/http://www.guggenheim.org/history/architecture |archive-date=May 1, 2016 |access-date=August 13, 2016}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Stern|Mellins|Fishman|1995|ps=.|pp=807–808}}</ref> the cost eventually doubled from the initial estimate.<ref name=nytCost>{{Cite news |date=April 4, 1952 |title=Art Museum Plan 5th Ave. Filed; Cylindrical Building Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright to Cost $2,000,000 |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1952/04/04/archives/art-museum-plan-5th-ave-filed-cylindrical-building-designed-by.html |access-date=October 3, 2022 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref>

Rebay envisioned a space that would facilitate a new way of seeing modern art. She wrote Wright that "each of these great masterpieces should be organized into space, and only you ... would test the possibilities to do so. ... I want a temple of spirit, a monument!"<ref>''The Guggenheim: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Making of the Modern Museum'', pp. 217–18, New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2009</ref>{{sfn|Levine|1996|p=299}} Critic [[Paul Goldberger]] later wrote that Wright's modernist building was a catalyst for change, making it "socially and culturally acceptable for an architect to design a highly expressive, intensely personal museum. In this sense almost every museum of our time is a child of the Guggenheim."<ref>{{cite web |title=55 Years Ago Tuesday: Guggenheim Museum Officially Opens |website=CBS News |date=October 22, 2014 |url=https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/55-years-ago-tuesday-guggenheim-museum-officially-opens/ |access-date=October 5, 2022}}</ref> The Guggenheim is the only museum Wright designed; its urban location required him to design it in a vertical rather than horizontal form, far different from his earlier, rural works.<ref name=Storrer401/> Since he was not licensed as an architect in New York, he relied on Arthur Cort Holden, of the architectural firm Holden, McLaughlin & Associates, to deal with New York City's [[New York City Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings|Board of Standards and Appeals]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dal Co |first=Francesco |title=The Guggenheim: Frank Lloyd Wright's Iconoclastic Masterpiece |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2017 |isbn=978-0300226058 |location=New Haven |pages=58 |oclc=969981835}}</ref>

[[File:Double spiral and helicoidal flight staircase at the entrance to the Vatican Museums designed by Giuseppe Momo 1932..jpg|thumb|[[Bramante Staircase|Staircase]] at the [[Vatican Museums]] designed by [[Giuseppe Momo]] in 1932]]
From 1943 to early 1944, Wright produced four differing designs. One had a hexagonal shape and level floors for the galleries, though all the others had circular schemes and used a ramp continuing around the building.<ref name=McCarter310>{{harvnb|McCarter|1997|p=310|ps=.}}</ref><ref name=Hitchcock1981>{{cite book |last1=Hitchcock |first1=Henry-Russell |title=Arquitectura de los siglos XIX y XX |date=1981 |publisher=Ediciones Cátedra |location=Madrid |isbn=9788437624464 |page=477 |edition=6th}}</ref>{{Efn|Wright had experimented with a ramp design as early as 1924, when he had drawn plans for a visitor center at [[Sugarloaf Mountain (Maryland)|Sugarloaf Mountain]] in Maryland, which was never built.<ref name=Pfeiffer6/> He later used the ramp design at the [[V. C. Morris Gift Shop]] in San Francisco, completed in 1948, and at the [[David and Gladys Wright House]] in Arizona, which he completed for his son in 1952.<ref name=Hitchcock1981/>}} In his notes, he indicated that he wanted a "well proportioned floor space from bottom to top—a wheel chair going around and up and down".<ref name=NYCLint7/><ref name=Stern809/><ref name=Pfeiffer6>{{harvnb|Pfeiffer|1995|ps=.|p=6}}</ref> His original concept was called an inverted "[[ziggurat]]", because it resembled the steep steps on the ziggurats built in ancient [[Mesopotamia]].<ref name=NYCLint7 /><ref name=Storrer401/> Several architecture professors have speculated that the helical ramp and glass dome of [[Giuseppe Momo]]'s [[Bramante Staircase#The modern staircase|1932 staircase]] at the [[Vatican Museums]] was an inspiration for Wright's ramp and atrium.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Tanzj |first1=Daniela |last2=Bentivegna |first2=Andrea |date=July 23, 2015 |title=The Vatican Museums and the Guggenheim: Two Ingenious Spirals of Art |url=http://www.lavocedinewyork.com/en/2015/07/23/the-vatican-museums-and-the-guggenheim-two-ingenious-spirals-of-art |journal=La Voce di New York}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Hersey |first1=George L. |title=High Renaissance art in St. Peter's and the Vatican: an interpretative guide |date=1993 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=9780226327822 |location=Chicago |page=[https://archive.org/details/highrenaissancea0000hers/page/128 128]}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Mindel |first1=Lee F. |date=February 28, 2013 |title=Compares the Oculi at the Vatican and the Guggenheim Museum |url=https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/lee-mindel-vatican-guggenheim-museum-frank-lloyd-wright |journal=Architectural Digest}}</ref>