2. The Museum Was Not Called the Guggenheim Until After Solomon Guggenheim Died

Photo: David M. Heald © The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York

Rebay’s influence on Guggenheim and her interest of abstract art is apparent from the museum’s beginnings. It opened in Midtown in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting. Rudolph Bauer, Marc Chagall, and Pablo Picasso were among the many abstract artists who found a home at the museum’s first real location. It was only after Guggenheim died in 1949 that the museum was finally named in his honor, christened the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1952.