Portable Black Hole-Live Art Guerrilla Action  by Tom Estes at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum - NYC. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (often referred to as "The Guggenheim") is a well-known museum designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. However, while most have heard of Frank Lloyd Wright and Solomon R. Guggenheim few people are familiar with the name Hilla Rebay as she has largely been written out of the history of the museum. Hilla Rabey was a collector and first director of The Museum of Non-Objective Painting, the Guggenheim Foundation's first museum, as well as the first director of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Strong willed and confident, Rebay was part of a coterie of art directors who brought European modern art in the United States. But even more importantly, Baroness Hildegard Anna Augusta Elizabeth Rebay von Ehrenwiesen, to be exact, was in fact the person who originated the Guggenheim Museum. Rabey's vision for the Guggenheim was one strictly of Non-Objective art. 


 
 Non-Objective art for Rebay was not only a new aesthetic that she believed was the only way to paint, but as a spiritual person, she felt Non-Objective painting held within a spiritual dimension. She made it quite clear that there was a difference between abstract art and Non-Objective art. According to her belief, abstract art was an abstraction of something: nature, an object, a figure, while Non-Objective painting was completely pure, devoid of any connection or association with what is seen in the world. Indeed the Guggenheim Foundation's first museum, was called "The Museum of Non-Objective Painting" and it was intended that the museum we now know as "The Guggenheim" was to be called the same. For her "temple" of art, Rebay envisioned a circular building with no stairs where the paintings especially of Bauer and Kandinsky would be shown to their best advantage. In addition, she wanted space for lectures and publications about Non-Objective art. In 1943, Frank Lloyd Wright was commissioned to design a building to house the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, which had been established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1939. In a letter dated June 1, 1943, Hilla Rebay, the curator of the foundation and director of the museum, instructed Wright, "I want a temple of spirit, a monument!" However, when Guggenheim died in 1949, construction of the museum had not even begun, but he left explicit directions that Hilla Rebay continue as Director with total control of every aspect of the building and the museum. The central concern for Rebay was that the building was more an architectural structure to enhance Frank Lloyd Wright's reputation and presence in New York, and less a "temple" for the paintings that she and Solomon Guggenheim were profoundly dedicated to and had spent years collecting.

 Most criticism of the building has focused on the idea that it overshadows the artworks displayed within, and that it is difficult to properly hang paintings in the shallow, windowless exhibition niches that surround the central spiral. The walls of the niches are neither vertical nor flat (most are gently concave), meaning that canvasses must be mounted raised from the wall's surface. Paintings hung slanted back would appear "as on the artist's easel". The limited space within the niches means that sculptures are generally relegated to plinths amid the main spiral walkway itself. Prior to its opening, twenty-one artists, including Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell, signed a letter protesting the display of their work in such a space. After Solomon's death, his nephew, Harry Guggenheim became President of the Board of Trustees. It was now time for Harry and Solomon Guggenheim's wife, Irene and her daughters to get back at the Baroness for all the years they took second place while Hilla ran the show with Solomon Guggenheim as her partner and patron. The fact is, the family intensely disliked the Baroness because of her power and close connection to Sol, as she called him. More and more duties were taken away from Hilla, as the family pushed her into the background. By 1952, she resigned as Director of the Museum. It was not until 1956 that construction of the Museum of Non-Objective Art, renamed in Guggenheim's memory, finally began. In 1957 construction of the museum began, opening in 1959 six months after Frank Lloyd Wright’s own death. However, there was no mention of Non-Objective art. The term was completely erased from any catalogs, lectures or history of the museum, as was the name of Hilla Rebay. Her achievements, persistence and single-mindedness in forming a unique museum, plus her assistance in helping artists in any way she could was eliminated from the literature, as her paintings, the paintings of Bauer and others from the original group were put in storage. Hilla Rebay was arrested in 1963 for tax evasion, having grossly overvalued the worth of he paintings which she had donated to the Guggenheim. 


 
 Critics of Rebay say she somewhat immodestly, she hung her own paintings (and a large number of her ex-lover, Bauer's) among the giants of modernism in the museum's gallery. Her catalogs were criticized for the fuzzy nonsense speak that often accompanied early analysis of non-objective art. Her vision for the Guggenheim was one strictly of non-objective art, which subsequent museum directors did not follow. And somewhat ironically, she doubted the value of non-objective sculpture while championing painting and American artists complained that their modern art was often ignored in favour of European artists. Hillla Rebay was a strong, controversial, outspoken personality. However, The Guggenheim is very much Rebay's creation. From the very begining Rebay acted as Solomon Guggenheim guide and art adviser pushing forward the collection right through the the creation of The Guggenheim Foundation, The Museum of Non-Objective Art and finally it's outstanding museum building which is one of the 20th century's most important architectural landmarks and "the first permanent museum to be built (rather than converted from a private house) in the United States. Yet the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum which provides a unique forum for the presentation of contemporary art is still considered one of the most important building of Wright's late career with its spiral ramp riding to a domed skylight. In the words of Paul Goldberger, "Wright's building made it socially and culturally acceptable for an architect to design a highly expressive, intensely personal museum. In this sense almost every museum of our time is a child of the Guggenheim." Although The Museum did present a small Memorial Exhibition for Hilla Rebay in 1968,which included her paintings, as well as Bauer, Kandinsky and other Non-Objective artists, nontheless, a number of supporters of the Baroness, in particular Rolph Scarlett, felt that both the selection of paintings and the literature about Rebay's the significance of Baroness Rebay and the Non-Objective artists and their primary importance in establishing the Guggenheim Museum from its inception was given short shrift. 



Artist Tom Estes, enters the realm of Loonytune physics to create a successful science and pop-media crossover
http://www.artslant.com/ny/events/show/213703-black-hole