Solomon R Guggenheim museum in Manhattan, New York (USA), ©Evan-Amos via Wikipedia
The Guggenheim Ascent: A Dream of Curves
At the edge of Central Park, a white spiral defies gravity. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Frank Lloyd Wright's organic masterpiece, isn't something you visit: you walk through it like a dream. Each step follows a curve, each glance reveals a dialogue between art and architecture.
Here, the ascent is not linear, but fluid—a silent climb that invites us to slow down, to feel. The building rises like an endless ramp, suspended around the void. We discover universes embedded in the zenithal light: a living fresco, unfolding as many visions of the world as there are floors.
From the masters of modern art—Picasso, Cézanne, and Kandinsky—to the engaged voices of contemporary art, such as Faith Ringgold and Rashid Johnson, the museum offers a sensory, intellectual, and almost spiritual journey. The exhibitions, both temporary and permanent, echo one another like the movements of a single score.
The ArtMajeur playlist by YourArt
Every iconic place deserves its soundtrack. These playlists are designed as listening companions to explore art differently—through sensation, intuition, and emotion. At the Guggenheim, between spirals and lights, the music hugs the building's curves, accompanies the ascent, and invites contemplation. Whether you're visiting or at home, let the playlist prolong your gaze, expand time, and bring the unique experience of this iconic museum to life.
6 pieces to enhance your visit to the Guggenheim
First step, climb the central ramp
Philip Glass – Opening - Hypnotic, repetitive, like an incantation as you ascend. Listen to it from the first steps up the central ramp, when the outside world fades away and the inner ascent begins.
Floor 2, in front of the works of the Thannhauser Collection
Miles Davis – Blue in Green - At the heart of the Guggenheim's white spiral, the Thannhauser Collection offers a precious, timeless haven. This treasure trove, assembled by Justin K. Thannhauser, displays a constellation of major works, a vibrant tribute to the dawn of modernity.
Here, the masters of the turn of the 20th century respond to each other in a silent dialogue: Picasso, Cézanne, Degas, Manet, Van Gogh, Gauguin , but also Kandinsky and Braque . Each canvas seems to carry within it the echo of an aesthetic revolution, the thrill of a changing world.
Floor 3, break at Café Rebay
Sofia Kourtesis – By Your Side - Nestled halfway up the Guggenheim's spiral, the Café Rebay rest stop invites you to pause in time. After exploring the curves of architecture and the twists and turns of creation, this space offers a breather—between silence and excitement.
Its name pays homage to Hilla Rebay , a visionary artist and the museum's first director, without whom the European avant-garde would not have found such an early echo in New York. It is in this spirit that the café welcomes visitors: as a point of balance between past and movement, contemplation and vitality.
Over coffee, tea, or a pastry, we let the images encountered on the previous floor settle: an intimate Picasso, a luminous Gauguin, a Kandinsky sketch. The ramp still needs to be climbed, but here, we take our time. The eye rests, the ear picks up fragments of conversations, and the mind slowly starts moving again.
It's a break that's part of the visit. A moment to connect architecture to everyday life, art to breath.
Floor 4, temporary exhibition “The Reach of Faith Ringgold” until September 14, 2025
Cassandra Jenkins – “The Ramble” - Upstairs, the spiral opens onto a vibrant territory: the world of Faith Ringgold , a major artist and witness to an America traversed by its struggles. “The Reach of Faith Ringgold” is not a simple retrospective — it is a manifesto in images, a journey through invisible stories, legacies too long silenced.
Her works—paintings, narrative quilts, artist's books—mix texts and textures, colors and struggles. Here, the intimate meets the political. The figures of Black women take center stage, assertive, dignified, powerful. They tell the story differently: through sewn fragments, through embroidered words, through gazes that don't lower their eyes.
In each work, a voice rises—that of the artist, but also that of generations. From Harlem to Paris, from the struggle for civil rights to the affirmation of African-American feminism, Faith Ringgold unfolds a living, embodied, and engaged memory.
In this suspended space at the Guggenheim, his works resonate with the architecture of the place. They break the silent whiteness with a woven, pictorial, collective voice. And they remind us that art can—and must—take a stand.
Floor 5, Temporary Exhibition: Beatriz Milhazes: Rigor and Beauty until
Brian Eno – An Ending (Ascent) - At the top of the spiral, color bursts forth. In the Tower Galleries , the exhibition "Beatriz Milhazes: Rigor and Beauty" unfolds a teeming, jubilant, and precise world. The Brazilian artist composes like a musician: rhythms, patterns, and vibrations intertwine in a rigorous visual choreography.
His works, often monumental in format, draw as much from ornamental tradition as from modernist vocabulary. They borrow from tropical flora, folk dances, Baroque art, and geometric abstraction. But beneath their apparent lightness, they reveal a skillfully controlled structure: each form is thought out, each color precisely adjusted.
Milhazes works in superpositions, through transfers, accumulations, and erasures. This method gives his paintings an almost tactile depth—a visual vertigo that unfolds in circles, spirals, and concentric patterns. It's as if the Guggenheim itself had inspired these balanced constructions, oscillating between spontaneity and discipline.
Rigor and beauty , yes—but also resistance. In exuberance, in the celebration of forms, the artist asserts a creative freedom based on the intelligence of the gaze and the density of the world.
The rotunda, going back down towards the shop on level 1
Laurie Anderson – Big Science - As we walk back down the ramp toward the boutique, the rotunda opens up like a space for meditation and resonance. Here, the exhibition Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers unfolds a dense visual poetry that invites intimate reflection.
The works, ranging from sculptures to paintings and installations, explore the tensions of identity, memory, and history. The materials—from concrete to leather, from charcoal to charred wood—bear the traces of a bodily and spiritual exploration. Each piece is a fragment of thought, a verse from a poem that questions the world and the self.
This stopover, suspended in the Guggenheim's overhead light, creates a moment of calm after the colorful and rhythmic ascent. The gaze rests, the breath slows. We enter into a dialogue with the artist, at the crossroads of cultures and emotions.
Before leaving this journey, the boutique offers a last creative breath, a place to extend the experience or take away a fragment of this unique spiral.
Nicolas Sarazin