The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously expanding collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year. The museum was established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, under the guidance of its first director, Hilla von Rebay. It adopted its current name in 1952, three years after the death of its founder Solomon R. Guggenheim.In 1959, the museum moved from rented space to its current building, a landmark work of 20th-century architecture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The cylindrical building, wider at the top than at the bottom, was conceived as a "temple of the spirit". Its unique ramp gallery extends up from ground level in a long, continuous spiral along the outer edges of the building to end just under the ceiling skylight. The building underwent extensive expansion and renovations in 1992 when an adjoining tower was built, and from 2005 to 2008.The museum's collection has grown over eight decades and is founded upon several important private collections, beginning with that of Solomon R. Guggenheim. The collection is shared with sister museums in Bilbao, Spain and elsewhere. In 2013, nearly 1.2 million people visited the museum, and it hosted the most popular exhibition in New York City.
The richly decorative and imaginative works by French artist Séraphine Louis (1864–1942) have long elicited fascination, and her working methods have often eluded art historians and conservators alike. Working in secret and outside established art circles, Séraphine employed materials such as natural resin varnishes and was said to have used household paints in addition to traditional artists' oil paints. In this study of six works in the collections of the Musée d'Art et d'Archéologie, Senlis (MAA), The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA), and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (MMA), attention was given to Séraphine's choice of colors and paints, in addition to identifying possible additions to or manipulations of painting media by the artist. Technical imaging was carried out using UVF to visualize the extent of Séraphine's use of natural resins. Analysis of the palette relied on XRF techniques and limited sampling for analysis by Raman and µ-FTIR spectroscopies. Overall, the following pigments were identified: lead white, zinc white, carbon-based black, red and brown ochres, umber, vermilion, alizarin lake, rhodamine B lake, Prussian blue, cobalt blue, ultramarine blue, chrome green, emerald green, viridian, cadmium yellow, and lead chromates, including chrome yellow deep and light, zinc yellow, and chrome orange. THM-Py-GCMS analysis of selected samples supported the documentary evidence of Séraphine's use of household oil paints; a single instance of a cellulose nitrate enamel paint was additionally determined by µ-FTIR. The chromatographic analysis also indicated a natural plant resin in her varnishes, probably dammar in combination with pine resin. Overall, this material investigation, accompanied by the art historical record, better reveals the techniques of an experimental painter whose works have come to epitomize French outsider artists of the early twentieth century.
This essay reflects on works chosen from the Sonnenfeld Collection at the Katzen Gallery at American University in Washington, DC—it originally accompanied an exhibition at that gallery in early 2021—to comment on the observations of several generations of Israeli artists on the land and its meaning for the culture and politics of Israel’s coming into existence and evolution during the first 70 years of its existence. Beginning with a pair of photographs of pioneers in the land in the fifteen years before statehood—and conceptually re-purposed by a contemporary Israeli artist in 2008—and moving through decade after decade of engagement with the landscape of Israel in both figurative and abstract modes, with and without humans present within these contexts, veering from brightly colored to virtually colorless images, including paintings and photographs, the essay traces a distance between earlier assertions of presence and the gradual emergence of questions regarding presence, absence, and identity. Israel, in its internal development, is both visually and thus verbally interwoven with the issue of its external relationship with its immediate neighbors and to the shifts between what comprises “internal” and “external”—”this” and “other”—as the context has metamorphosized from the 1930s to the 1950s to 1967 to 1993 to 2000 and to the present.
The contribution of cellular senescence to a diverse range of biological processes, including normal physiology, ageing, and pathology were long overlooked but have now taken centre stage. In this Editorial, we will briefly outline the review and original work articles contained in The FEBS Journal 's Special Issue on Senescence in Ageing and Disease. It is beginning to be appreciated that senescent cells can exert both beneficial and adverse effects following tissue injury. Additionally, while these cells play critical roles for maintaining a healthy physiology, they also promote ageing and certain pathological conditions (including developmental disorders). Progress has been made in re‐defining and identifying senescent cells, especially in slow‐proliferating or terminally differentiated tissues, such as the brain and cardiovascular system. Novel approaches and techniques for isolating senescent cells will greatly increase our appreciation for senescent properties in tissues. The inter‐organ communication between senescent cells and other residents of the tissue microenvironment, via the senescence‐associated secretory phenotype (SASP), is a focus of several reviews in this Special Issue. The importance of the SASP in promoting tumour development and the evolution of SARS CoV‐2 variants is also highlighted. In one of the two original articles included in the issue, the impact of dietary macronutrients and the presence of senescent cells in mice is investigated. Lastly, we continue to deepen our understanding on the use of senolytics and senomorphics to specifically target senescent cells or their secreted components, respectively, which is discussed in several of the reviews included here.
Max Ernst was one of the most influential artists associated with both the Dada and Surrealist movements. However, until now, only few scientific studies have been devoted to his works. This paper presents the results of a multi-analytical investigation on six oil paintings, made between 1927 and 1942, belonging to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York). Through a combined art historical and scientific approach, this study aims at understanding Ernst’s painting techniques, including frottage , grattage , dripping , and decalcomania , the used materials, and the state of conservation of the artworks. Non-invasive in situ investigations were performed by means of Vis–NIR multi-spectral imaging, X-ray fluorescence, external reflection FTIR and Raman spectroscopy. Imaging analysis revealed important information about Ernst’s painting methods while the other techniques provided useful information about the ground layer, the painting materials and the presence of alteration products. Ernst’s palette discloses great freedom in his use of materials and evolution during the time. This investigation demonstrates that an integrated, non-invasive, diagnostic approach provides a thorough analysis of materials and execution techniques of Ernst’ masterworks allowing an in-depth knowledge of his highly skilled work.
The Thannhauser Collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, represents an important survey of European avant-garde art production during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among the works included in this collection are three paintings by Vincent van Gogh, namely Roadway with Underpass (1887), Landscape with Snow (1888), and Mountains at Saint-Rémy (1889). These examples each exhibit some degree of surface alteration, including fading of specific pigments and, in one case, a non-original, discolored varnish, resulting in obscured color and spatial relationships, as well as being the subject of questions regarding authenticity in the case of the two earlier pictures. Initial examination involved documentation of the brushwork, paint quality, and distribution of colors under magnification. Infrared (IR) and ultraviolet (UV) photography, as well as X-radiography, provided additional information on the surface coatings, the structure of the works, and their supports. Subsequently, an in-depth scientific investigation of the ground and paint layers, with a special focus on fading colors and altered surfaces, was carried out non-invasively with point and macro-X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy, visible reflection spectroscopy, and multi-channel visible spectrum four-light imaging, followed by the analysis of cross sections and dispersed pigment samples by means of optical microscopy, transmission Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) and Raman spectroscopies, and scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDS), as well as high-performance liquid chromatography with photodiode array detection (HPLC-PDA) and pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS). Results indicated that both the brushwork and artist's palette of all three paintings are consistent with data previously reported for other Van Gogh works and with pigments described in the artist’s letters to his friends and his brother Theo. Most notably, evidence of biodeterioration and paint alteration phenomena was found on Roadway with Underpass , while specific pigments such as eosin red—historically sold as geranium lake—were detected in areas of Landscape with Snow and Mountains at Saint-Rémy that display severe fading. In addition to assisting the development of a suitable plan for the conservation of the 1887 painting, this study traces the progression of Van Gogh’s practice over three years critical to his artistic development, discusses the historical context in which each masterpiece was created, identifies the range of materials and techniques used, and addresses authenticity questions by providing a comparison with results of scientific analysis from other similar works.
