The Guggenheim

Last Friday we visited the Guggenheim! This was by far our favorite museum to date. Similar to the MET, the Guggenheim is also located on 5th avenue on the Upper East of New York. Upon arriving at the Guggenheim we were surprised to see that not only was the museum flooded with guests, but there were two people working the admission ticket line so we had to stand in line for 20 minutes. Student admission was 15 dollars was kind of pricey; however it included a complimentary head phone set/guide for the museum which the other
museums we visited did not include in a purchase.

The coolest thing about the Guggenheim was its

aesthetically pleasing architecture. The museums completely white and it's built on a series of ramps that spiral upwards. The entire experience is like a journey, instead of walking back and forth from exhibit to exhibit you just walk up the spiral. Also another weird/interesting thing about the Guggenheim was that about every 10 minutes the voice of a weird lady singing would play through out the museum. It gave it the museum a kind of eery creepy feeling, but the headphone tour said that it was supposed to give of the feel of overhearing a woman singing throughout the museum.

Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed above the main level so we don't have any photos of our favorite pieces to display, but we will do our best to describe them.

A highlight/something peculiar about the museum was that from the ground level written along the three pillars

written "Earth to earth ashes to ashes dust to dust". We had no idea what this meant but it definitely added to the eery feel we got when we first stepped in the museum.

One of the first pieces we enjoyed was an Andy Warhol piece. At first glance it just looks like a really blurry orange photo. However after looking closer and listening to the guided tour we came to realize that this piece actually depicted an execution chair. Thanks to google images we have a picture of it for you. It was interesting to see a more morbid side to Warhol than we had seen at MoMA.

Another cool thing we noticed in Guggenheim was that they showed the same video by Marina Abramovic that we had seen at MoMA that depicted someone furiously washing a skeleton. It was cool to see how a lot of the museums have overlapping exhibits.

The art at Guggenheim encompassed a broad spectrum of artists whether it be by age, style, type of work, etc. For example, we saw an artist who's work was just a black canvas with tons of questions in white lettering ranging from "What will I do with my life?" to "Did you ever wish you were Christian?". To illustrate the broad spectrum of artists, there was a wing of the Guggenheim entirely dedicated to children's art work. Kind of weird to think that at age 5 you could be in one of the America's most popular museums. To be honest none of the art was that impressive, it really did look like the art we did at 5 years old....but maybe we're just jealous/bitter.

Like we said earlier there was an eery/creepy feel to the Guggenheim. A lot of the art had a sinister aspect to it. There were themes like slavery, torture, and the Holocaust. One of our favorites was a photograph of a bunch of fingers, a nose, and body parts sticking out through the dirt and a compact mirror that you could see the murder in the reflection in.

Perhaps it was the uncomfortable feeling that the Guggenheim gave us that made us enjoy it so much. Nonetheless, so far this is our favorite museum and we would strongly recommend that students our age take the time to visit when they're in NYC! It's a nice break from the ancient/cultural art that we see all the time.

Overall rating: 10

Student friendliness: 10

Do we recommend visiting?: 10

OMG!!!!! ALL 10'S!!!!!!!!!!! GO VISIT NOW!