The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is a small museum on the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy. It is one of several museums of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.
Containing prinicipally the personal art collection of Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979), a former wife of artist Max Ernst and a niece of mining magnate Solomon R. Guggenheim, this museum houses a somewhat smaller and more idiosyncratic collection than the other Guggenheim Foundation museums. However, the works on display include those of prominent American modernistss and Italian futuristss. Pieces in the collection embrace Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism.
The collection is housed in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, an unfinished 18th century palazzo which was never built past the ground floor level. In one room, the museum also exhibits a few paintings by her daughter Pegeen Vail.
Its most famous (or notorious) exhibit is the 1948 bronze "The Angel of the City" by Marino Marini, positioned at the front of the palazzo, facing the Grand Canal. It is rumoured that this nude and clearly excited horse rider is possessed of a screw-in (sic) demountable penis so that it may be removed in order to avoid offending sensitive VIPs. This may be an urban myth.
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is the most important museum in Italy for European and American art of the first half of the 20th century.
