The Guggenheim Museum

An internationally renowned art museum and one of the most significant architectural icons of the 20th century, the Guggenheim Museum is at once a vital cultural center, an educational institution, and the heart of an international network of museums. Visitors can experience special exhibitions of modern and contemporary art, lectures by artists and critics, performances and film screenings, classes for teens and adults, and daily tours of the galleries led by experienced docents. Founded on a collection of early modern masterpieces, the Guggenheim Museum today is an ever-growing institution devoted to the art of the 20th century and beyond.

Assembled over the past decade, Bilbao’s collection of art spans from the mid-twentieth century to the present day. Concentrated on post-war painting and sculpture in America and Europe, the collection is autonomous yet complements the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s outstanding holdings of modern and contemporary art. This concept of individual collections existing within a shared network is at the heart of the Guggenheim’s aim to foster cultural exchange and exhibit art to the widest possible audience.

Under the Guggenheim Foundation’s advisement, Bilbao has acquired key works by some of the most significant artists of the second half of the twentieth century, including Anselm Kiefer, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, James Rosenquist, Clyfford Still, Cy Twombly, and Andy Warhol. The acquisition of singular masterworks by leading artists of our time allows the museum to present a series of influential high points of modern and contemporary art. Major acquisitions include Joseph Beuys’s Lightning with Stag in Its Glare (1958–85); Jeff Koons’s Puppy (1992), now iconic in its position in the museum plaza; Mark Rothko’s Untitled (1952–53); and Robert Rauschenberg’s Barge (1962–63), purchased jointly with the museum in New York.

The de Young’s American Art Department

he de Young's American Art Department is home to one of the finest survey collections of American paintings in the United States. Strengthened by the acquisition of the Rockefeller Collection of American Art, the de Young's holdings include more than 1000 paintings ranging from 1670 to the present day.

While essentially chronological, the installation of American art at the de Young juxtaposes works from different cultures and time periods to emphasize the historical connections between works in the collection, and includes galleries devoted to art in the following areas: Native American and Spanish Colonial; Anglo-Colonial; Federal and Neoclassical; Victorian genre and realism; trompe l’oeil still life; the Hudson River School, Barbizon and Tonalism; Impressionism and the Ashcan School; Arts and Crafts; Modernism; Social Realism and American Scene; Surrealism and Abstraction; Beat, Pop and Figurative; and contemporary. Also featured are important California collections with national significance, including examples of Spanish colonial, Arts and Crafts, Bay Area Figurative, and Assemblage art.