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Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in 1937 by philanthropist Solomon R. Guggenheim and his long-time art advisor, artist Hilla von Rebay. The foundation is a leading institution for the collection, preservation, and research of modern and contemporary art and operates several museums around the world. The first museum established by the foundation was The Museum of Non-Objective Painting, in New York City. This became The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1952, and the foundation moved the collection into its first permanent museum building, in New York City, in 1959. The foundation next opened the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy, in 1980. Its international network of museums expanded in 1997 to include the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Bilbao, Spain, and it expects to open a new museum, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates after its construction is completed.

The mission of the foundation is "to promote the understanding and appreciation of art, architecture, and other manifestations of visual culture, primarily of the modern and contemporary periods, and to collect, conserve, and study" modern and contemporary art. The Foundation seeks, in its constituent museums, to unite distinguished architecture and artworks. The foundation's first permanent museum, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, is housed in a modern spiral building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Guggenheim Bilbao was designed by Frank Gehry. Both of these innovative designs received wide press and critical attention. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is housed in an 18th-century Italian palace, the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal.

The permanent collection of the foundation is based primarily on nine private collections: Solomon R. Guggenheim's collection of non-objective paintings; Karl Nierendorf's collection of German expressionism and early abstract expressionism; Katherine S. Dreier's gift of paintings and sculptures; Peggy Guggenheim's collection, concentrating on abstraction and surrealism; Justin K. and Hilde Thannhauser's collection of impressionist, post-impressionist, and early modern masterpieces; part of Hilla von Rebay's collection; Giuseppe Panza di Biumo's holdings of American minimalist, post-minimalist, environmental and conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s; a collection of photographs and mixed media from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation; and the Bohen Foundation's collection of film, video, photography and new media. The foundation's collections have expanded greatly through eight decades and include every major movement of 20th- and 21st-century art. Its directors and curators have attempted to form a single collection that is not encyclopedic, but rather based on their unique visions. The collection has grown in scope to include new media and performance art, and the foundation has entered into collaborations with YouTube and BMW.

Hilla Rebay and early years
Solomon R. Guggenheim, a member of a wealthy mining family, began collecting works of the old masters in the 1890s. He retired from his business in 1919 to devote more time to art collecting. In 1926, at age 66, he met artist Hilla von Rebay, who was commissioned by Guggenheim's wife, Irene Rothschild, to paint his portrait. Rebay introduced him to European avant-garde art, in particular abstract art that she felt had a spiritual and utopian aspect (non-objective art). Guggenheim completely changed his collecting strategy. In 1930, the two visited Wassily Kandinsky's studio in Dessau, Germany, and Guggenheim began to purchase Kandinsky's work. The same year, Guggenheim began to display the collection to the public at his apartment in the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Guggenheim's purchases continued with the works of Rudolf Bauer, Fernand Léger, Robert Delaunay, and great artists who were not of the non-objective school, such as Marc Chagall, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Pablo Picasso and László Moholy-Nagy.

In 1937, Guggenheim established the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to foster the appreciation of modern art. The foundation's first venue for the display of art was called the "Museum of Non-Objective Painting". It opened in 1939 under the direction of Rebay, its first curator, in a former automobile showroom at East 54th Street in midtown Manhattan. This moved, in 1947, to another rented space at 1071 Fifth Avenue. Under Rebay's guidance, Guggenheim sought to include in the collection the most important examples of non-objective art available at the time, such as Kandinsky's Composition 8 (1923), Léger's Contrast of Forms (1913) and Delaunay's Simultaneous Windows (2nd Motif, 1st Part)'' (1912).

By the early 1940s, the foundation had accumulated such a large collection of avant-garde paintings that the need for a permanent building to house the art collection had become apparent. In 1943, Guggenheim and Rebay commissioned architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design the museum building. Rebay conceived of the space as a "temple of the spirit" that would facilitate a new way of looking at the modern pieces in the collection. In 1948, the collection was greatly expanded through the purchase of art dealer Karl Nierendorf's estate of some 730 objects, notably German expressionist paintings. By that time, the foundation's collection included a broad spectrum of expressionist and surrealist works, including paintings by Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka and Joan Miró. Guggenheim died in 1949, and the museum was renamed the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1952. The foundation expanded its display activities with a series of traveling exhibitions.

After Guggenheim's death, members of the Guggenheim family who sat on the foundation's board of directors had personal and philosophical differences with Rebay, and in 1952 she resigned as director of the museum. Nevertheless, she left a portion of her personal collection to the foundation in her will, including works by Kandinsky, Klee, Alexander Calder, Gleizes, Piet Mondrian and Kurt Schwitters.

Sweeney and completion of the first building
In 1953, the foundation's collecting boundaries extended even further under its new director, James Johnson Sweeney. Sweeney rejected Rebay's dismissal of "objective" painting and sculpture, and he soon acquired Constantin Brâncuși's Adam and Eve (1921), followed by works of other modernist sculptors, including Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti and David Smith. Sweeney reached beyond the 20th century to acquire Paul Cézanne's Man with Crossed Arms (c. 1899). In 1953, the foundation received a gift of 28 important works from the Estate of Katherine S. Dreier, a founder of America's first collection to be called a modern art museum, the Société Anonyme. Dreier had been a colleague of Rebay's. The works included Little French Girl (1914–18) by Brâncuși, an untitled still life (1916) by Juan Gris, a bronze sculpture (1919) by Alexander Archipenko and three collages (1919–21) by German Hanoverian Dadaist Schwitters. It also included works by Calder, Marcel Duchamp, El Lissitzky and Mondrian. Among others, Sweeney also acquired the works of Alberto Giacometti, David Hayes, Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. He also established the Guggenheim International Awards in 1956. Sweeney oversaw the last half dozen years of the construction of the museum building, during which time he had an antagonistic relationship with Frank Lloyd Wright, especially regarding the building's lighting issues.

The distinctive cylindrical building, wider at the top than the bottom, with a spiral ramp climbing gently from ground level to the skylight at the top, turned out to be Wright's last major work, as the architect died six months before its opening. The building opened in October 1959 to large crowds and instantly polarized architecture critics, though today it is widely praised. Some of the criticism focused on the idea that the building overshadows the artworks displayed inside, and that it is difficult to properly hang paintings in the shallow, windowless, concave exhibition niches that surround the central spiral. Prior to its opening, twenty-one artists signed a letter protesting the display of their work in such a space. Upon opening, the museum received a largely favorable response from the public, despite the early misgivings: "overall Wright's design was, and still is, admired for being highly personal and inviting".

Messer and the ramp
Thomas M. Messer succeeded Sweeney as director of the museum (but not the foundation) in 1961 and stayed for 27 years, the longest tenure of any of the city's major arts institutions' directors. When Messer took over, the museum's ability to present art at all was still in doubt due to the challenges presented by continuous spiral ramp gallery that is both tilted and has curved walls. Almost immediately, in 1962, he took a risk putting on a large exhibition that combined the Guggenheim's paintings with sculptures on loan from the Hirshhorn Museum. Three-dimensional sculpture, in particular, raised "the problem of installing such a show in a museum bearing so close a resemblance to the circular geography of hell", where any vertical object appears tilted in a "drunken lurch" because the slope of the floor and the curvature of the walls could combine to produce vexing optical illusions.

It turned out that the combination could work well in the Guggenheim's space, but, Messer recalled that at the time, "I was scared. I half felt that this would be my last exhibition." Messer had the foresight to prepare by staging a smaller sculpture exhibition the previous year, in which he discovered how to compensate for the space's weird geometry by constructing special plinths at a particular angle, so the pieces were not at a true vertical yet appeared to be so. In the earlier sculpture show, this trick proved impossible for one piece, an Alexander Calder mobile whose wire inevitably hung at a true plumb vertical, "suggesting hallucination" in the disorienting context of the tilted floor.

The next year, Messer acquired a private collection from art dealer Justin K. Thannhauser for the foundation's permanent collection. These 73 works include Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and French modern masterpieces, including important works by Paul Gauguin, Édouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Vincent van Gogh and 32 works by Pablo Picasso.

Global expansion
Peggy Guggenheim, Solomon's niece, collected and displayed art beginning in 1938. At Messer's urging, she donated her art collection and home in Venice, the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, to the foundation in 1976. After her death in 1979, the collection of more than 300 works was re-opened to the public as the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in 1980 by the foundation, which was then under the direction of Peter Lawson-Johnston. It includes early 20th century works of prominent American modernists and Italian futurists. Pieces in the collection embrace Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract expressionism. Some of the notable artists are Picasso, Dalí, Magritte, Brâncuși (including a sculpture from the Bird in Space series), eleven works by Pollock, Braque, Duchamp, Léger, Severini, Picabia, de Chirico, Mondrian, Kandinsky, Miró, Giacometti, Klee, Gorky, Calder, Max Ernst and Peggy Guggenheim's daughter, Pegeen Vail Guggenheim.

Since 1985, the United States has selected the foundation to operate the U.S. Pavilion of the Venice Biennale, an exhibition held every other summer. In 1986, the foundation purchased the Palladian-style pavilion, built in 1930.

Thomas Krens, director of the foundation from 1988 to 2008, led a rapid expansion of the foundation's collections. In 1991, he broadened the foundation's holdings by acquiring the Panza Collection. Assembled by Count Giuseppe di Biumo and his wife, Giovanna, the Panza Collection includes examples of Minimalist sculptures by Carl Andre, Dan Flavin and Donald Judd, and Minimalist paintings by Robert Mangold, Brice Marden and Robert Ryman, as well as an array of Post-Minimal, Conceptual, and perceptual art by Robert Morris, Richard Serra, James Turrell, Lawrence Weiner and others, notably American examples of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1992, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation gifted 200 of his best photographs to the foundation. The works spanned his entire output, from his early collages, Polaroids, portraits of celebrities, self-portraits, male and female nudes, flowers and statues. It also featured mixed-media constructions and included his well-known 1998 Self-Portrait. The acquisition initiated the foundation's photography exhibition program.

Also in 1992, the New York museum building's exhibition and other space was expanded by the addition of an adjoining rectangular tower, taller than the original spiral, and a renovation of the original building. The same year, the foundation opened the small Guggenheim Museum SoHo in the SoHo neighborhood of downtown Manhattan, designed by Arata Isozaki, and hosted exhibits that included Marc Chagall and the Jewish Theater, Paul Klee at the Guggenheim Museum, Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective, and Andy Warhol: The Last Supper. This space was kept after the main museum was re-opened, but it closed in 2002 due to an economic downturn. To finance these moves, controversially, the foundation sold works by Kandinsky, Chagall and Modigliani to raise $47 million, drawing considerable criticism for trading masters for "trendy" latecomers. In The New York Times, critic Michael Kimmelman wrote that the sales "stretched the accepted rules of deaccessioning further than many American institutions have been willing to do." Krens defended the action as consistent with the museum's principles, including expanding its international collection and building its "postwar collection to the strength of our pre-war holdings" and pointed out that such sales are a regular practice by museums.

One of Krens's most significant initiatives was to expand the foundation's international presence. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened in 1997. Designed by Frank Gehry, the titanium, glass and limestone Guggenheim Bilbao is a centerpiece of the revitalization of the Basque city of Bilbao, Spain. The building was greeted with glowing praise from architecture critics. The Basque government funded the construction, while the Foundation purchased the artworks and manages the facility. The museum's permanent collection includes works by modern and contemporary Basque and Spanish artists like Eduardo Chillida, Juan Muñoz and Antonio Saura, as well as works from the foundation, and it has organized various exhibitions curated by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Also in 1997, the foundation opened a small gallery in the Unter den Linden area of Berlin, Germany, as the Deutsche Guggenheim, in cooperation with the Deutsche Bank. The Deutsche Guggenheim had four exhibitions each year, complemented by educational programming, and it annually commissioned one, or occasionally two, new artworks or series by contemporary artists, which were then displayed at the museum in a special exhibition. After 14 years of operation, Deutsche Guggenheim closed at the end of 2012.

Later activities
Under Krens, the foundation mounted some of its most popular exhibitions: "Africa: The Art of a Continent" in 1996; "China: 5,000 Years" in 1998, "Brazil: Body & Soul" in 2001; and "The Aztec Empire" in 2004. It has shown unusual exhibitions on occasion, for example commercial art installations of Giorgio Armani suits and motorcycles. The New Criterion's Hilton Kramer condemned both The Art of the Motorcycle and the retrospective of the work of fashion designer Armani. Others disagreed. A 2009 retrospective of Frank Lloyd Wright at the original building in New York showcased the architect on the 50th anniversary of the opening of the building and was the museum's most popular exhibit since it began keeping such attendance records in 1992.

In 2001, the foundation opened two new museums in Las Vegas, Guggenheim Las Vegas and Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, both designed by architect Rem Koolhaas. The museums showcased highlights of the collections, respectively, of the foundation and the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The first and larger of the two hosted one exhibition: "The Art of the Motorcycle", before closing in 2003. The latter, held ten exhibitions of masterworks by leading artists from the last six centuries, including Van Eyck, Titian, Velázquez, Van Gogh, Picasso, Pollock and Lichtenstein. The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum closed in 2008.

In 2001 the foundation also established the Sackler Center for Arts Education on the campus of the original New York building. The same year, the foundation received a gift of the large collection of the Bohen Foundation, which, for two decades, commissioned new works of art with an emphasis on film, video, photography and new media. Artists included in the collection are Pierre Huyghe, Sophie Calle and Jac Leirner. The foundation planned for a large Guggenheim museum on the waterfront in lower Manhattan, and it engaged Frank Gehry as the architect. His essentially complete designs for the building were showcased in 2001 at the Fifth Avenue museum, but these plans were disrupted by the economic downturn of the early 2000s and the September 11, 2001 attacks, which prompted reconsideration of any plans in lower Manhattan. Other projects in Rio de Janeiro, Vilnius, Salzburg, Guadalajara and Taichung were also considered but not completed.

On January 19, 2005, the philanthropist Peter B. Lewis resigned from his position as chairman of the foundation, expressing his opposition to Krens' plans for further global expansion of the Guggenheim museums. Lewis had been the largest donor in the history of the Guggenheim. Tensions continued, however, and on February 27, 2008, Krens resigned from his position in the foundation. He has remained, however, as an advisor for international affairs. Over his two decades at the head of the foundation, Krens was criticized not only for the deaccessioning of older works of the museum but for both his businesslike style and perceived populism and commercialization. One writer commented, "Krens has been both praised and vilified for turning what was once a small New York institution into a worldwide brand, creating the first truly multinational arts institution. ... Krens transformed the Guggenheim into one of the best-known brand name in the arts."

Richard Armstrong became the fifth director of the foundation on November 4, 2008. He had been director of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for 12 years, where he had also served as chief curator and curator of contemporary art. In addition to its permanent collections, which continue to grow, the foundation administers loan exhibitions and co-organizes exhibitions with other museums to foster public outreach.

In 2006, Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, announced an agreement with the Guggenheim Foundation to build a new museum, "Guggenheim Abu Dhabi". Gehry designed the structure, which will, if completed, be the foundation's largest by far. It began construction on the northwest tip of Saadiyat Island, where a performing arts center and other museums have been built. The completion date has been pushed back repeatedly, and the museum is now expected to open about 2023 at the earliest. The museum is expected to house modern and contemporary collections that will focus on Middle-Eastern contemporary art and to display special exhibitions from the foundation's main collection.

In 2011, the city of Helsinki, Finland, commissioned the foundation to study the feasibility of constructing a museum there. The feasibility study recommended building the museum in Helsinki's South Harbor. In 2012, the proposal was rejected by the city board "over concerns about the cost and a proposed merger with the Helsinki Art Museum". In 2013, the foundation made a revised proposal that provideed that the project's architect would be chosen through an international competition. The proposal anticipated that the Guggenheim's licensing fee would be funded by private sources, with decreased operating costs and increased revenues; one journalist called the Foundation's estimates "speculative at best". In 2014, the city council approved an international architecture competition to solicit designs for the museum, and the following year, a design was chosen. In 2016 the Helsinki city council voted to reject the plan.

Architecture
The foundation has long sought, in its constituent museums, to unite its artworks with distinguished architecture. In 1943, Hilla von Rebay and Solomon R. Guggenheim commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build the foundation's first permanent museum. Rebay wrote to Wright that "each of these great masterpieces should be organized into space, and only you ... would test the possibilities to do so. … I want a temple of spirit, a monument!" The resultant achievement, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York City, testifies not only to Wright's architectural genius, but also to the adventurous spirit that characterized its founders. The critic Paul Goldberger later wrote that, before Wright's modernist building, "there were only two common models for museum design: Beaux-arts Palace ... and the International Style Pavilion." Goldberger thought the building a catalyst for change, making 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."

New York
Before settling on the present site for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Streets, Wright, Rebay and Guggenheim considered numerous locations in Manhattan, as well as in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, overlooking the Hudson River. Guggenheim felt that the site's proximity to Central Park was important; the park afforded relief from the noise, congestion and concrete of the city. Nature also provided the museum with inspiration. The building embodies Wright's attempts "to render the inherent plasticity of organic forms in architecture." The Guggenheim was to be the only museum designed by Wright. The city location required Wright to design the building in a vertical rather than a horizontal form, far different from his earlier, rural works.

Wright's original concept was called an inverted "ziggurat", because it resembled the steep steps on the ziggurats built in ancient Mesopotamia. His design dispensed with the conventional approach to museum layout, in which visitors are led through a series of interconnected rooms and forced to retrace their steps when exiting. Wright's plan was for the museum guests to ride to the top of the building by elevator, to descend at a leisurely pace along the gentle slope of the continuous ramp, and to view the atrium of the building as the last work of art. The open rotunda afforded viewers the unique possibility of seeing several bays of work on different levels simultaneously and even to interact with guests on other levels. The spiral design recalled a nautilus shell, with continuous spaces flowing freely one into another.

Even as it embraced nature, Wright's design also expresses his take on modernist architecture's rigid geometry. Wright ascribed a symbolic meaning to the building's shapes. He explained, "these geometric forms suggest certain human ideas, moods, sentiments – as for instance: the circle, infinity; the triangle, structural unity; the spiral, organic progress; the square, integrity." Forms echo one another throughout: oval-shaped columns, for example, reiterate the geometry of the fountain. Circularity is the leitmotif, from the rotunda to the inlaid design of the terrazzo floors.

Wright's vision took 16 years to be fulfilled. Set in sharp contrast to typically rectangular Manhattan buildings that surround it, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum building opened in October 1959. Even before it opened, the design polarized architecture critics. Some believed that the building would overshadow the museum's artworks. "On the contrary", wrote the architect, the design makes "the building and the painting an uninterrupted, beautiful symphony such as never existed in the World of Art before." Other critics, and many artists, felt that it is awkward to properly hang paintings in the shallow, windowless, concave exhibition niches that surround the central spiral. The building, nevertheless, became widely praised and inspired many other architects.

The building's surface was made out of concrete to reduce the cost, inferior to the stone finish that Wright had wanted. The small rotunda (or "Monitor building", as Wright called it) next to the large rotunda was intended to house apartments for Rebay and Guggenheim but instead became offices and storage space. In 1965, the second floor of the Monitor building was renovated to display the museum's growing permanent collection, and with the restoration of the museum in 1990–92, it was turned over entirely to exhibition space and christened the Thannhauser Building, in honor of one of the most important bequests to the museum. Wright's original plan for an adjoining tower, artists' studios and apartments went unrealized, largely for financial reasons. However, as part of the restoration, architects Gwathmey Siegel and Associates analyzed Wright's original sketches to design the rectangular 10-story limestone tower, that stands behind, and taller than, the original spiral building (replacing a much smaller structure), which has four additional exhibition galleries with flat walls that are "more appropriate for the display of art." Also in the original construction, the main gallery skylight had been covered, which compromised Wight's carefully articulated lighting effects. This changed in 1992 when the skylight was restored to its original design. Funding for the alterations was raised partly through the controversial sale of masterworks by the foundation in 1991.

In 2001, the museum opened the Sackler Center for Arts Education to the public, which was another part of Wright's original design for the building, through a gift of the Mortimer D. Sackler family. Located just below the large rotunda, this 8,200-square-foot education facility provides classes and lectures about the visual and performing arts and opportunities to interact with the museum's collections and special exhibitions through its labs, exhibition spaces, conference rooms and the Peter B. Lewis Theater. Between September 2005 and July 2008, the Guggenheim Museum underwent a significant exterior restoration to repair cracks and modernize systems and exterior details. Artist Jenny Holzer painted a tribute, For the Guggenheim, in honor of Peter B. Lewis, a major benefactor in the restoration project. The museum was registered as a National Historic Landmark on October 6, 2008.

Venice
Peggy Guggenheim purchased the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni in 1948 to house and display her collection to the public, and she resided there for thirty years. Although sometimes mistaken for a modern building, it is an 18th-century palace designed by the Venetian architect Lorenzo Boschetti. The building was unfinished and has an unusually low elevation on the Grand Canal. The museum's website describes its "long low façade, made of Istrian stone and set off against the trees in the garden behind that soften its lines, forms a welcome "caesura" in the stately march of Grand Canal palaces from the Accademia to the Salute."

The Foundation took control of the building in 1979 following Guggenheim's death and took steps to expand gallery space. By 1985, "all of the rooms on the main floor had been converted into galleries ... the white Istrian stone facade and the unique canal terrace had been restored", and a protruding arcade wing, called the barchessa, had been rebuilt by architect Giorgio Bellavitis. Since 1985, the museum has been open year-round. In 1993, the foundation converted apartments adjacent to the museum into a garden annex, a shop and more galleries. In 1995, the Nasher Sculpture Garden was completed, Since 1993, the museum has doubled in size, from 2,000 to 4,000 square meters. and it was renovated in 2012.

Bilbao
In 1991, the Basque government suggested to the foundation that it would fund a Guggenheim museum to be built in Bilbao. The foundation selected Frank Gehry as the architect, and its director, Thomas Krens, encouraged him to design something daring and innovative. The curves on the exterior of the building were intended to appear random; the architect said that "the randomness of the curves are designed to catch the light". The interior "is designed around a large, light-filled atrium with views of Bilbao's estuary and the surrounding hills of the Basque country."

When the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened to the public in 1997, it was immediately hailed as one of the world's most spectacular buildings, a masterpiece of the 20th century. Architect Philip Johnson described it as "the greatest building of our time", while critic Calvin Tomkins, in The New Yorker, characterized it as "a fantastic dream ship of undulating form in a cloak of titanium", its brilliantly reflective panels also reminiscent of fish scales. Herbert Muschamp praised its "mercurial brilliance" in The New York Times Magazine. The Independent calls the museum "an astonishing architectural feat".

The museum is seamlessly integrated into the urban context, unfolding its interconnecting shapes of stone, glass and titanium on a 32,500-square-meter site along the Nervión River in the old industrial heart of the city; while modest from street level, it is most impressive when viewed from the river. Eleven thousand square meters of exhibition space are distributed over nineteen galleries, ten of which follow a classic orthogonal plan that can be identified from the exterior by their stone finishes. The remaining nine galleries are irregularly shaped and can be identified from the outside by their swirling organic forms and titanium cladding. The largest gallery measures 30 meters wide and 130 meters long. Since 2005, it has housed Richard Serra's monumental installation "The Matter of Time".

Berlin
Deutsche Guggenheim, in Berlin, opened one month after the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, in 1997. Designed by American architect Richard Gluckman in a minimalist style, the modest Berlin gallery occupied a corner of the ground floor of the sandstone Deutsche Bank building, in the Unter der Linden boulevard, constructed in 1920. It closed in 2013.

Abu Dhabi
The museum in Abu Dhabi is planned to be the foundation's largest facility by far. Gehry's design features exhibition galleries, education and research space, a conservation laboratory, a center for contemporary Arab, Islamic and Middle Eastern culture, and a center for "art and technology". Inspired by traditional middle-eastern covered courtyards and wind towers, used to cool structures exposed to the desert sun, the museum's clusters of horizontal and vertical galleries of various sizes are connected by catwalks and planned around a central, covered courtyard, incorporating natural features intended to maximize the energy efficiency of the building. The largest galleries will offer a grand scale for the display of large contemporary art installations. Parts of the building will be four stories tall, with "clusters of block and cone-shaped connected galleries seemingly piled on top of each other." The museum is intended to be a centerpiece in the island's plan for contemporary art and culture".

The new museum began construction on a peninsula at the northwestern tip of Saadiyat Island adjacent to Abu Dhabi. Gehry commented, "The site itself, virtually on the water or close to the water on all sides, in a desert landscape with the beautiful sea and the light quality of the place suggested some of the direction." The completion date was pushed back from 2011 to at least 2017. In March 2011, over 130 artists announced a plan to boycott the Abu Dhabi museum, citing reports of abuses of foreign workers, including the arbitrary withholding of wages, unsafe working conditions and failure of companies to pay recruitment fees to laborers. Continued progress awaits the approval of construction applications and contracts by the Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC). As of early 2016, no progress had been made on construction, and the Guggenheim Foundation confirmed that "TDIC has not yet awarded a contract."

Helsinki design (never built)
The Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition in 2014–2015 was the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation's first open, international architectural competition. It received 1,715 submissions from 77 countries, a record for a museum design competition. The design chosen for a proposed €130 million Guggenheim museum in Helsinki, Finland, envisioned "an indistinct jumble of pavilions faced in charred wood" and glass. The winning design was by Paris-based Moreau Kusunoki Architectes. Critics objected to the dark color of the design's exterior, which contrasts with the surrounding architecture, as well as the shape of the building. Osku Pajamaki, vice chairman of the city's executive board, said: "The symbol of the lighthouse is arrogant in the middle of the historical center ... [like] a Guggenheim museum next to Notre Dame in Paris. People are approaching from the sea, and the first thing that they will see is that the citizens of Helsinki bought their identity from the Guggenheim." The proposed museum was rejected by the Helsinki city council in 2016.

Collaborations
The foundation annually lends hundreds of works of art from its collections to other museums and institutions around the world. It also enters into collaborations with partners throughout the world to engage with diverse audiences and to promote cultural discourse. From 2006 to 2011, exhibitions of the foundation's works were seen in more than 80 museums, such as the National Art Museum of China in Beijing during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

YouTube Play
In 2010, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and YouTube, in collaboration with Hewlett-Packard and Intel, presented YouTube Play, A Biennial of Creative Video. More than 23,000 videos from 91 countries were submitted in response to an open call for submissions aimed "to discover and showcase the most exceptional talent working in the ever-expanding realm of online video". Foundation curators selected a short list of 125 videos from which a jury, including artists Laurie Anderson and Takashi Murakami and the musical group Animal Collective, picked a playlist of 25 works. These were featured at the YouTube Play event at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York on October 21, 2010, during which the videos were projected on the exterior of the museum building and inside the museum's rotunda.

The 25 selected works continued on view at the museum until October 24, 2010. The 125 short list videos were on view throughout the fall of 2010 at kiosks at Guggenheim museums in New York, Berlin, Bilbao and Venice. The project's YouTube channel, youtube.com/play, features all of the short list videos, as well as highlights from the event in New York and information about the project. The collaboration was intended to reach wide audiences beyond the museum environment. New York Times art critic Roberta Smith commented: "It is an idea whose time has come. ... In many ways it is simply an old-fashioned open-submission exhibition of the kind that regional museums and art centers around the country have staged for decades – except that it has gone digital."

BMW Guggenheim Lab
The BMW Guggenheim Lab is an interdisciplinary travelling project that began in 2011. A collaboration between the BMW Group and the foundation, the lab is part urban think tank, part community center, and part gathering space, which explores issues of urban life through public programming and discourse. The program is designed to proactively engage residents from each city that it visits, and participants on the Internet and from around the world, in free programs and experiments, and to address ideas and issues of urban living with particular relevance to each city. The Lab's Advisory Committee of experts nominates each city's lab team, an interdisciplinary group that creates the programming for that location. The lab was expected to visit nine cities for three months each over the course of six years, with three different structures housing the lab, each of which was to travel to three cities. In 2013, however, BMW ended its support of the project.

The lab's structure was designed by the Tokyo-based architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow. The project's three-city cycle was designed around the theme Confronting Comfort, which explored ways of making urban environments more responsive to people's needs, striking a balance between individual and collective comfort, and promoting environmental and social responsibility. The Lab's Advisory Committee members were: Daniel Barenboim, Elizabeth Diller, Nicholas Humphrey, Muchadeyi Masunda, Enrique Peñalosa, Juliet Schor, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Wang Shi. The lab was open from August 3 to October 16, 2011, in New York City's East Village and was attended by over 54,000 visitors from 60 countries. The Lab was open in Berlin from May 24 to July 29, 2012. The programming of the Berlin Lab focused on four main topics: Empowerment Technologies (Gómez-Márquez), Dynamic Connections (Smith), Urban Micro-Lens (Rose) and the Senseable (SENSEable) City (Ratti). The Lab opened in Mumbai, India, on December 9, 2012, and ran until January 20, 2013. The central location was on the grounds of the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, with additional satellite locations around the city. Along with neighborhood-specific public programming, the Mumbai Lab program included participatory research studies and design projects.

The program ended with an exhibition, Participatory City: 100 Urban Trends from the BMW Guggenheim Lab, which was on view at the New York museum from October 11, 2013, through January 5, 2014.

Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative
The Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative was a five-year program, supported by Swiss bank UBS in which the Foundation identified and worked with artists, curators and educators from Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa to expand its reach in the international art world. For each of the three phases of the project, the museum invited one curator from the chosen region to the Guggenheim Museum in New York City for a two-year curatorial residency to work with a team of Guggenheim staff to identify new artworks that reflect the range of talents in their parts of the world. The resident curators organized international touring exhibitions that highlighted these artworks and helped to organize educational activities. The Foundation acquired these artworks for its permanent collection and included them as the focus of exhibitions at the museum in New York and subsequently traveled to two other cultural institutions or other venues around the world. The Foundation supplemented the exhibitions with a series of public and online programs based on the theme of cross-cultural exchange. UBS reportedly contributed more than $40 million to the project to pay for its activities and the art acquisitions. Foundation director Richard Armstrong commented: "We are hoping to challenge our Western-centric view of art history."

The first exhibition (phase 1) focused on art from South and Southeast Asia and was curated by Singaporean June Yap, who worked in the curatorial departments of such modern and contemporary art museums as the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore and the Singapore Art Museum. The second and third phases of the project focused on Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa.

Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation
The Hong Kong-based Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation (founded by Robert Hung-Ngai Ho) made a $10 million grant to help the New York museum to commission works for its permanent collection by at least three Chinese-born artists and to hire a curator dedicated to its Chinese art collection. The works were to be exhibited at the museum in New York in three exhibitions between 2014 and 2017 and also at the other Guggenheim museums. The commissions were part of an effort by the museum to broaden the geographical scope of its collection, and the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation hoped that the collaboration would foster "a greater understanding of Chinese culture."

title: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation


text:
HKN, Inc.

HKN, Inc. is a company engaged in hydrocarbon exploration headquartered in Southlake, Texas. It is notable for the Harken Energy scandal, which involved allegations of insider trading by George W. Bush in 1990. The company was known as Harken Energy Corporation until 2007.

History
In 1973, the company was founded as an unprofitable collection of Texas oil wells for investors seeking tax write-offs.

In 1986, the company acquired Spectrum 7 for 200,000 shares from George W. Bush. After the sale of his company, Bush served on the board of directors of the company and received $80,000-$100,000 per year in consulting fees. Bush remained on the board through 1993.

In 1987, Talat Othman joined the board of the company and served as the chair of the Audit Committee.

In 1987, Bush obtained a critical $25 million loan from a BCCI joint venture.

In 1989, the company's subsidiary Aloha Petroleum was sold to company insiders for $12 million, most of which was borrowed from Harken. The sale of the subsidiary for an exorbitant price helped the company show a profit that year and disguise losses, a similar technique used by Enron that led to the Enron scandal.

In September 1989, the company made an offer to acquire Tesoro Petroleum. The offer was withdrawn in February 1990.

In 2007, the company changed its name to HKN, Inc.

Insider trading allegations
Harken attracted attention because of the role played in its affairs during the 1980s by George W. Bush, later the President of the United States. On June 22, 1990, while he was a member of the company's board of directors, Bush sold stock in Harken shortly before the company announced substantial losses. This transaction resulted in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of probable insider trading.

A transaction associated with the financial endowment of Harvard University was also investigated.

Exploration offshore Costa Rica
In 2000, a subsidiary of the company received a 20-year concession to exploit resources offshore Costa Rica. After pressure from indigenous tribes and environmentalists, operating as Acción de Lucha Anti-Petrola, the government instituted a moratorium on exploration. In September 2003, the company filed a dispute seeking $57 billion from the government of Costa Rica for lost earnings. The lawsuit was thrown out of court and the concession was revoked.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: HKN, Inc.


text:
Talk:Micromeria douglasii

Previous version
Previous version stated:

"A misspelling of hierba Buena, or 'good herb' in Spanish. A marijuana reference."

Not quite. Yerba is indeed an alternative spelling of hierba in parts of Latin America, but yerbabuena or hierbabuena is actually mint. If you're looking to get high when you buy "hierbabuena" chewing-gum in Mexico, you're going to be disappointed :-)  -- Infrogmation

 * Well technically it means spearmint, but it is still sometimes used as slang for marijuana in mexico, i don't know if this is an english translation import or comes from rather obvious connotation of its literal meaning. -- Dark fred Talk to me 23:36, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

LOL... Yes, Yerbabuena doesn't have anything to do with marijuana. "Yerba" is an alternate spelling of "hierba" (formal spelling) in Spanish, meaning "herb". Yerbabuena or hierbabuena refers usually to those mints in latin countries but "buena" ("good") refers to their medicinal properties. It's possible, yes, tha some gangs use the word yerbabuena as an euphemism for marijuana but that would be a very isolated phenomenon with no documented proof. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.31.24.113 (talk) 15:15, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Food and drink Tagging
This article talk page was automatically added with WikiProject Food and drink banner as it falls under Category:Food or one of its subcategories. If you find this addition an error, Kindly undo the changes and update the inappropriate categories if needed. The bot was instructed to tagg these articles upon consenus from WikiProject Food and drink. You can find the related request for tagging here. If you have concerns, please inform on the project talk page -- TinucherianBot (talk) 11:47, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Medicinal uses
In order to make this article more properly encyclopedic: please add this herb's medicinal uses. 173.88.246.138 (talk) 00:00, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Micromeria douglasii


text:
John III of Sweden

John III (Johan III, Juhana III; 20 December 1537 – 17 November 1592) was King of Sweden from 1569 until his death. He was the son of King Gustav I of Sweden and his second wife Margaret Leijonhufvud. He was also, quite autonomously, the Duke of Finland from 1556 to 1563. In 1581 he assumed the title Grand Prince of Finland. He attained the Swedish throne after a rebellion against his half-brother Eric XIV. He is mainly remembered for his attempts to close the gap between the newly established Lutheran Church of Sweden and the Catholic Church, as well as his conflict with and murder of his brother.

His first wife was Catherine Jagellonica of the Polish–Lithuanian ruling family, and their son Sigismund eventually ascended both the Polish–Lithuanian and Swedish thrones.

Biography
John was the second son of Gustav Vasa (1523–60). His mother was Margaret Leijonhufvud (1514–51), a Swedish noblewoman. Gustav had placed his son in Finland to secure Swedish territory in the eastern Baltic from a Russian threat. John was sent as an emissary to England to secure the hand of Queen Elizabeth I in marriage to his half-brother Crown Prince Erik (1559–60). The marriage would have secured Swedish access to Western Europe. That mission failed, but in England, John observed the reintroduction of Protestantism and the Book of Common Prayer (1559). The Finnish duke had liturgical and theological interests.

As Duke of Finland, he opposed the efforts of his half-brother King Eric XIV (1560–1569) to secure Reval and East Baltic ports. John and his wife, Catherine, were imprisoned in the Gripsholm in 1563 after being captured during the Siege of Åbo. After his release from prison, probably because of his brother's insanity (see Sture Murders), John again joined the opposition of the nobles, deposed Eric and made himself the king. His important ally was his maternal uncle Sten Leijonhufvud, who at deathbed was made Count of Raseborg. Shortly after this John executed his brother's most trusted counsellor, Jöran Persson, whom he held largely responsible for his harsh treatment while in prison.

John further initiated peace talks with Denmark–Norway and Lübeck to end the Scandinavian Seven Years' War but rejected the resulting Treaties of Roskilde in which his envoys had accepted far-reaching Danish demands. After two more years of fighting, the war was concluded without many Swedish concessions in the Treaty of Stettin. During the following years he successfully fought Russia in the Livonian War, concluded by the Treaty of Plussa in 1583, a war that meant a Swedish reconquest of Narva. As a whole his foreign policy was affected by his connection to Poland of which country his son Sigismund III Vasa was made king in 1587.

In domestic politics, John showed clear Catholic sympathies inspired by his Polish wife, a fact that created frictions to the Swedish clergy and nobility. He sought to enlist the help of the papacy in gaining release of his wife's family assets, which were frozen in Naples. He also allowed Jesuits to secretly staff the Royal Theological College in Stockholm. However, John himself was a learned follower of the mediating theologian George Cassander. He sought reconciliation between Rome and Wittenberg on the basis of the consensus of the first five centuries of Christianity (consensus quinquesaecularis). John approved the publication of the Lutheran Swedish Church Order of Archbishop Laurentius Petri in 1571 but also got the church to approve an addendum to the church order in 1575, Nova ordinantia ecclesiastica that displayed a return to patristic sources. This set the stage for his promulgation of the Swedish-Latin Red Book, entitled Liturgia suecanae ecclesiae catholicae & orthodoxae conformis, which reintroduced several Catholic customs and resulted in the Liturgical Struggle, which lasted for twenty years. In 1575, he gave his permission for the remaining Catholic convents in Sweden to start receiving novices again. From time to time, he was also at odds theologically with his younger brother Duke Charles of Sudermannia (afterwards Charles IX of Sweden), who had Calvinist sympathies, and did not promote King John's Liturgy in his duchy. John III was an eager patron of art and architecture; he turned the medieval Kalmar Castle into a Renaissance palace and often resided there because it was closer to Poland.

As king
In January 1569, John was recognized as king by the same riksdag that forced Eric XIV off the throne. But this recognition was not without influence from John; Duke Karl received confirmation on his dukedom without the restrictions on his power that the Arboga Agreement imposed. The nobilities' power and rights were extended and their responsibilities lessened.

John was still concerned about his position as king as long as Eric was alive. During Eric's imprisonment, three major conspiracies were made to depose John: the 1569 Plot, the Mornay Plot, and the 1576 Plot. The fear of a possible liberation of the imprisoned king worried him to the point that in 1571, he ordered the guards to murder the captured king if there were any suspicion of an attempt to liberate him. It is possible that this is how Eric died in 1577.

John III claimed that he had liberated Sweden from the "tyrant" Eric XIV, just as his father had liberated Sweden from the "bloodhound" Christian II. John was violent, hot-tempered, and greatly suspicious.

Family
John married his first wife, Catherine Jagellonica of Poland (1526–83), of the House of Jagiello, in Vilnius on 4 October 1562. In Sweden, she is known as Katarina Jagellonica. She was the sister of king Sigismund II Augustus of Poland. Their children were:

 * Isabella (1564–1566)
 * Sigismund (1566–1632), King of Poland (1587–1632), King of Sweden (1592–99), and Grand Duke of Finland and Lithuania
 * Anna (1568–1625)

He married his second wife, Gunilla Bielke (1568–1592), on 21 February 1585; they had a son:

 * John (1589–1618), firstly Duke of Finland, then from 1608 Duke of Ostrogothia. The young duke married his first cousin Maria Elisabet (1596–1618), daughter of Charles IX of Sweden (reigned 1599–1611)

With his mistress Karin Hansdotter (1532–1596) he had at least four illegitimate children:
 * Sofia Gyllenhielm (1556–1583), who married Pontus De la Gardie
 * Augustus Gyllenhielm (1557–1560)
 * Julius Gyllenhielm (1559–1581)
 * Lucretia Gyllenhielm (1560–1585)

John cared for Karin and their children even after he married Catherine Jagellonica, in 1562. He got Karin a husband who would care for her and the children: in 1561, she married nobleman Klas Andersson (Västgöte), a friend and servant of John. They had a daughter named Brita. He continued supporting Karin and his illegitimate children as king, from 1568. In 1572 Karin married again, as her first husband was executed for treason by Eric XIV in 1563, to a Lars Henrikson, whom John ennobled in 1576 to care for his issue with Karin. The same year, he made his daughter Sofia a lady in the castle, as a servant to his sister Princess Elizabeth of Sweden. In 1580, John married her to Pontus de la Gardie. She later died giving birth to Jacob De la Gardie.

title: John III of Sweden


text:
Harken Energy scandal

The Harken Energy Scandal refers to a series of transactions entered into during 1990 involving Harken Energy. These transactions are alleged to involve either issues relating to insider trading, or influence peddling. Although no wrongdoings were found by any investigating authorities, the matter generated political controversy.

Spectrum 7 purchase
George W. Bush ran an energy company called Spectrum 7 during the 1980s. In the mid-1980s the oil market was in a slump, with prices dropping daily. The firm was in financial trouble until another company, a distressed oil properties specialist, Harken Energy, purchased Spectrum 7 in 1986. Part of the attraction for Harken's management to purchase Spectrum 7 was having Bush on its board — his father was then vice-president, he had extensive political connections and knowledge of the oil and gas business. Harken Energy offered Bush a seat on its board of directors along with stock worth about $500,000 at the time. Bush received a consulting contract worth between $80,000 and $120,000 annually as well.

The Job
In 1987 and 1988, George W. Bush dedicated himself (and much of his efforts) to the presidential campaign of his father George H. W. Bush. Fortunes turned for Bush, and the following year he invested in the Texas Rangers baseball team. To help pay for this investment, he borrowed a sum of $600,000; to pay off the loan, he sold his stock in Harken Energy. That investment paid off handsomely for him, not only monetarily. As team owner, the popularity derived from his public persona lead to the invitation to run for governor of Texas and ultimately, two terms as president.

Bush's stock sale and its consequences for Harken Energy
George W. Bush sold 212,140 shares of Harken Energy at $4 a share on June 22, 1990, for a grand total of $848,560. Two months later, on August 20, Harken announced a larger than expected loss for the previous quarter. Surprisingly, the price of the company's stock shares barely declined at first, following these two negative, or "bearish", events. In the ensuing months, Harken's stock price did drift downward to $1.25 per share by the end of the year. However, the stock price then recovered its value and more the following year, which was strange behavior for the stock. The sale of the large block of shares had become widely publicized and allegations of the use of insider information, and improper stock transactions, were leveled at Bush.

SEC investigation
The SEC's exhaustive investigation examined thousands of pages of documents. Additionally, and in an unusual move, Bush waived client-attorney privileges so the attorneys could be questioned, in order to leave no remaining doubts on the subject. Regarding whether Bush knew in advance about the losses, the SEC investigators found: "The evidence establishes that George W. Bush was not aware of the majority of the items that comprised the loss Harken announced on August 20." The SEC investigators concluded that the loss resulted from write-downs and expenses that occurred after he sold his stock. Basically an outsider, Bush did not usually receive the Executive Committee's Weekly Flash Reports on the company's financial condition. In short, concluded an SEC investigative memo, George W. Bush was not particularly informed about the company's finances.

Regarding whether the stock was sold deliberately in time to avoid losing money before bad news was made public, the SEC found that Bush did not initiate the sale, but was contacted by a stockbroker who offered to buy a large block of Harken stock. There was evidence that before selling the stock, company board member Bush checked with inside and outside company executives, fellow directors and legal experts concerning the sale of his stock. The SEC report read, "In light of the facts uncovered, it would be difficult to establish that, even assuming Bush possessed material nonpublic information, he acted with sentience or intent to defraud."

Whether the news of Harken's unexpectedly large loss hurt the company's investors unfairly was quickly discarded after the SEC examined Harken Energy's share price just before and just after news of the loss was made public. Though the price dropped about 20% that day, the move downward was not immediate, and the price rebounded to $3 the following day. If indeed the announcement had caused a loss of confidence in the company, SEC investigators reasoned, the stock would most likely have fallen immediately and stayed down. "The conclusion of the Office of Economic Analysis is that, because the price of Harken did not immediately react to the earnings announcement and there is no news that explains Harken's return to its pre-announcement price of $3 on August 21, 1990, the earnings announcement did not provide investors with new material information," the SEC wrote. Moreover, the stock rebounded the next year and hit $8 a share.

Formal troubles
There are also questions about when federal regulators were informed of the sale, and whether Bush tried to hide this information. Newspapers have alleged that though the law requires prompt disclosure of insider sales, Bush neglected to inform the SEC about his transaction until 34 weeks had passed. Even though he had broken the law, no charges were filed. Many have linked this to his father's position as president.

The reality of the matter is somewhat different. Although these articles usually do not mention it, only one of the two disclosure forms Bush was required to file with the SEC was delayed in its filing. The "Notice of Proposed Sale of Securities" Form 144, was filed on the day of the sale, June 22, 1990, thereby clearing Bush of the intent to hide or not disclose. Bush filed the second form, Form 4, the following year, in 1991, due to "a mix up with the attorneys". Because the stock sale information had indeed been disclosed, and duly filed in a timely manner via Form 144, the tardy filing of Form 4 was not viewed as a serious or punishable offense. It appears that the late filing of Form 4 was not considered serious by the SEC at the time.

Conclusion
Bush was cleared of any wrongdoing. The Center for Public Integrity said of this episode - "The documents from the SEC inquiry show that Harken Energy engaged in questionable accounting practices as they attempted to stave off a financial crisis in 1989 and 1990. They also show that [George W.] Bush was unaware of much of what was going on in the company. Ultimately, the SEC required the company to correct its financial reports, but concluded there was insufficient evidence to pursue an insider trading case against Bush."

SEC documents

 * Janick, Herb; Gerlach, Paul; Adelman, Jim. "In the Matter of trading in the Securities of Harken Energy Corp., HO-2518" August 21, 1991 Internal SEC Memorandum
 * The Division of Enforcement. "In the Matter of Trading in the Securities of Harken Energy Corp., File No. HO-2518 - SEC Action Memorandum, March 18, 1992

title: Harken Energy scandal


text:
Moral Majority

The Moral Majority was an American political organization and movement associated with the Christian right and the Republican Party in the United States. It was founded in 1979 by Baptist minister Jerry Falwell Sr. and associates, and dissolved in the late 1980s. It played a key role in the mobilization of conservative Christians as a political force and particularly in Republican presidential victories throughout the 1980s.

Before establishment
The origins of the Moral Majority can be traced to 1976 when Baptist minister Jerry Falwell Sr. embarked on a series of "I Love America" rallies across the country to raise awareness of social issues important to him. These rallies were an extension of Falwell's decision to go against the traditional Baptist principle of separating religion and politics, a change of heart Falwell says he had when he perceived what he described as the decay of the nation's morality. Through hosting these rallies, Falwell was able to gauge national support for a formal organization and also raise his profile as a leader. Having already been a part of a well-established network of ministers and ministries, within a few years Falwell was favorably positioned to launch the Moral Majority.

The impetus for the Moral Majority was the struggle for control of an American conservative Christian advocacy group known as Christian Voice during 1978. Robert Grant, Christian Voice's president, said in a news conference that the religious right was a "sham... controlled by three Catholics and a Jew." Following this, Paul Weyrich, Terry Dolan, Richard Viguerie (the Catholics) and Howard Phillips (the Jew) left Christian Voice.

During a 1979 meeting, they urged televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr. to found the Moral Majority (a phrase coined by Weyrich ). This was the period when the New Christian Right arose. Joining Falwell in the Moral Majority was Ed McAteer, who the same year, founded the Religious Roundtable in Memphis, Tennessee.

Establishment and organizational activity
Falwell and Weyrich founded the Moral Majority in June 1979. According to former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who was Texas evangelist James Robison's communications director at the time, Robison's "Freedom Rally" at the Dallas Convention Center was the genesis of the Moral Majority.

The Moral Majority was predominately a Southern-oriented organization of the Christian Right, although its state chapters and political activity extended beyond the South. The number of state chapters grew quickly, with organizations in eighteen states by 1980. The variety of resources available to the Moral Majority at its founding facilitated this rapid expansion, and included Falwell's mailing list from his program, Old Time Gospel Hour. In addition, the Moral Majority took control of the Old Time Gospel Hour publication, Journal Champion, which had been distributed to the show's donors. Through the 1980s, Falwell was the organization's best-known spokesperson. By 1982, Moral Majority surpassed Christian Voice in size and influence.

The Moral Majority's headquarters were in Lynchburg, Virginia, where Falwell was the presiding minister of the nation's largest independent Baptist church, Thomas Road Baptist Church. Virginia has been a seat of Christian Right politics, being the state where the Christian Coalition's first headquarters were established. Falwell was at the head of the Moral Majority and maintained an advisory board, constituting the organization's primary leadership. This leadership was drawn mostly from Falwell's fellow members of the Baptist Bible Fellowship. Falwell insisted the Moral Majority leadership also include Catholics and Jews, although not all members of the leadership approved of this inclusion.

The Moral Majority was an organization made up of conservative Christian political action committees which campaigned on issues its personnel believed were important to maintaining its Christian conception of moral law. They believed this represented the opinions of the majority of Americans (hence the movement's name). With a membership of millions, the Moral Majority became one of the largest conservative lobby groups in the United States and at its height, it claimed more than four million members and over two million donors. These members were spread among about twenty state organizations, of which Washington State's was the largest. The Moral Majority was incorporated into the Liberty Federation in 1985, remaining a distinct entity but falling under the Liberty Federation's larger jurisdiction. In 1987, Falwell retired as the formal head of the Moral Majority, and was succeeded by Jerry Nims, although he maintained an active and visible role within the organization. The same year, a major effort which Falwell made to bring scandal-ridden Jim Bakker's PTL ministries out of financial trouble proved unsuccessful.

Dissolution
By the end of Ronald Reagan's presidential administration, Christian Right organizations were generally in a phase of decline. After Reagan's two terms in office, donations were decreasing, because after eight years of Christian Right-supported leadership, the nation was no longer seen as in the same state of supposed moral peril as it was when Reagan first took office. The Moral Majority's financial base seriously eroded by the time it became part of the Liberty Federation; its financial difficulties ultimately were a major factor in the decision to disband the organization. Falwell offered an optimistic public opinion about the Moral Majority's dissolution. Disbanding the Moral Majority in 1989 in Las Vegas, Falwell declared, "Our goal has been achieved... The religious right is solidly in place and[...] religious conservatives in America are now in for the duration."

Organizational goals and composition
The Moral Majority sought to mobilize conservative Americans to become politically active on issues they thought were important. A variety of tactics were used to garner support. These tactics included direct-mail campaigns, telephone hotlines, rallies, and religious television broadcasts. Although the Moral Majority operated for only a decade, it rapidly became a visible political force and was relatively effective in its mobilization goals. According to Robert Liebman and Robert Wuthnow, common explanations for this success include:

 * The Moral Majority was founded with strong financial backing already in place.
 * Its leaders frequently communicated with its constituents, enabling consistent messages to resonate throughout all levels.
 * Its leaders generally had previous organizational and management experience.
 * The general public was amenable to the issues the Moral Majority emphasized.

Some issues for which the Moral Majority campaigned included:
 * Promotion of traditional family values
 * Opposition to media outlets accused of promoting an anti-family agenda
 * Opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment and Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
 * Opposition to state recognition or acceptance of homosexual acts
 * Prohibition of abortion, including in cases involving incest or rape
 * Support for Christian prayers in schools
 * Proselytising to Jews and other non-Christians for conversion to Christianity

Social agenda
The Moral Majority successfully campaigned to create an integrated social platform that appealed to most conservative Christians by packaging a variety of previously disparate issues under the banner of "traditional family values". The Moral Majority portrayed issues such as abortion, divorce, feminism, gay and lesbian rights, and the Equal Rights Amendment as attacks on the traditional concept and values of American families and tapped into a sense of societal moral decay that resonated with many evangelicals. They also campaigned for the inclusion of prayer in schools and tax incentives for married couples as protection for the traditional family structure. Under this pro-family agenda, they mobilized a large base of supporters with issue-centric dialogue that they proliferated in their network of preachers and mailings.

Gay rights issues
In particular, the anti-homosexual rhetoric that they publicized through fund-raising letters and Christian broadcasting had higher contribution rates than other topics. While not explicitly anti-gay in their public platforms during the 1970s, their internal mobilization as "shared anti-gay sentiment aided in solidifying a collective set of grievances and ideologies, in establishing a collective identity of constituents, and in constructing a hostile enemy against which the conservative Christian activists were to fight". The Moral Majority refrained from directly speaking out against gays, feminists, and pro-abortion parties and instead used "pro-family" rhetoric to articulate their point. For example, instead of coming out directly against homosexuality and gay families, leaders of the Moral Majority defined a family as "two heterosexual parents" which appealed to many conservatives.

Later, as the organization gained more influence in the 1980s, their rhetoric became more explicit in their stance on gay rights as they characterized the movement as an attack on the American family. Jerry Falwell Sr. expressed that because gay people were rejected by most of society, they had no choice but to prey on the young and were therefore a threat to children and families. Various Moral Majority members also expressed more extreme opinions, such as Moral Majority commentator Charlie Judd, who argued that "There are absolutes in this world. Just as jumping off a building will kill a person, so will the spread of homosexuality bring about the demise of American culture as we know it".

Organizational structure
The Moral Majority comprised four distinct organizations:

 * Moral Majority Inc. – the organization's lobbying division, which addressed issues on local, state, and national levels.
 * Moral Majority Foundation – the organization's educational component, through which the Moral Majority educated ministers and lay people on political issues and conducted voter registration drives.
 * Moral Majority Legal Defense Fund – the organization's legal instrument, used primarily to challenge the American Civil Liberties Union and secular humanist issues in court.
 * Moral Majority Political Action Committee – the organization's mechanism for supporting the candidacy of people whose political platforms reflected Moral Majority values.

The state chapters of the Moral Majority were financially independent from the national organization and relied on local resources to conduct their activities. Consequently, the national organization encouraged local chapters to cooperate with their policies but had little control over local chapters' activities. Political activity of the Moral Majority divided accordingly, with the national Moral Majority office usually focused on addressing multiple issues through Congress while local branches tended to work on a single issue within their respective states.

Political involvement
The Moral Majority engaged in political activity in a variety of ways, including national media campaigns and grassroots organization aimed at supporting particular candidates in elections and using mail and phone calls to reach office-holders. The Moral Majority's initial political actions were aimed at supporting Jesse Helms' proposed legislation on school prayer. Before long, the Moral Majority became heavily invested in presidential elections and national politics; although at the state level branches of the Moral Majority continued to pursue specific issues at lower levels of government. As far as elections, state Moral Majority chapters tended to deliberately focus their efforts towards particular candidates. For example, state chapters participated in campaigns to oust liberal members of Congress during the 1980 election. Also, in 1981, the Moral Majority mobilized delegates to the Virginia Republican state nominating convention in order to support Guy Farley, an evangelical candidate for lieutenant governor.

Nationally, the Moral Majority encouraged electoral participation among its members and used registration drives to register church-goers to vote, with the logic that Moral Majority members would be likely to vote for Moral Majority-endorsed candidates, thus strengthening the organization's electoral efficacy and strengthening its endorsements. Leaders within the Moral Majority asked ministers give their congregants political direction, reminding congregants when to vote, whom to vote for, and why the Moral Majority held particular positions on issues. The Moral Majority, however, is probably best known for its involvement in presidential elections, specifically those of Ronald Reagan.

Presidential elections
The 1976 election of Jimmy Carter as President of the United States marked a milestone for evangelical Christians. For the first time, a self-professed evangelical Christian had been elected to the nation's highest office, bringing the national awareness of evangelical Christianity to a new level. Despite commonality in religious identification, however, evangelical Christians in general and eventually the newly formed Moral Majority in particular came to be disappointed with Carter's policies. Carter did not share the Moral Majority's political imperative to unify personal and political positions and would instead support the positions of his own party, the Democratic Party. In particular, Carter did not actively oppose his party's general pro-choice platform on abortion, nor did Carter work to bridge the church–state divide, both factors in the Moral Majority's decision to support Ronald Reagan's candidacy in 1980.

1980
The Moral Majority was a relatively early supporter of Reagan, endorsing him before the Republican convention. According to Jimmy Carter, "that autumn [1980] a group headed by Jerry Falwell purchased $10 million in commercials on southern radio and TV to brand me as a traitor to the South and no longer a Christian." Naturally, the Moral Majority continued working on behalf of Reagan after he gained the Republican nomination. Following the organization's lead, more than one-fifth of Moral Majority supporters that had supported Carter in 1976 voted for Reagan in 1980. After Reagan's victory, Falwell attributed Reagan's success directly to the Moral Majority and others registering and encouraging church-goers to vote who had never before been politically active. Empirical evidence suggests that Falwell's claim about the role of Christian Right organizations in Reagan's victory has some truth, though difficult to determine definitively.

Reagan sought input from the Moral Majority leadership during his campaign and appointed the Rev. Robert Billings, the Moral Majority's first executive director, to be a religious advisor to the campaign. Later, Reagan appointed Billings to a position in the Department of Education. This appointment was particularly significant for the Moral Majority, which had lobbied on education policy issues, especially those regarding private schools.

1984
The Moral Majority maintained their support for Reagan's 1984 reelection campaign and, alongside other Christian Right organizations, influenced the Republican platform for the election, shaping the party's campaign stances on school prayer and abortion. The nation's political climate, however, had changed since Reagan's first campaign. Although Reagan won reelection, the role of the Moral Majority in the victory had changed since 1980. A study of voters in the 1984 election showed that more anti-Moral Majority voters voted for Walter Mondale than pro-Moral Majority voters voted for Reagan, suggesting the Moral Majority may have actually had a negative effect on Reagan's campaign.

1988
1988 was the last presidential election for which the Moral Majority was an active organization. With Reagan having reached his two-term limit, the Republican nomination was open to a variety of primary contenders. The evangelical minister and televangelist Pat Robertson sought the Republican nomination and would have been, at first glance, a natural choice for the Moral Majority's support. Although Robertson's political platforms were extremely similar to the ones the Moral Majority supported, Falwell gave his organization's endorsement to contender George H. W. Bush instead. Falwell's decision highlighted the rivalry between Falwell and Robertson as televangelists but also revealed the deep-seated tension that still persisted between competing evangelical traditions – Falwell's fundamentalist tradition was at odds with Robertson's charismatic tradition.

Challenges to the Moral Majority
By 1987–88, the views of the Moral Majority were challenged widely and the organization started to crumble. With its waning support, critics said "The Moral Majority is neither", meaning the organization was neither moral nor a majority. By 1988, there were serious cash flow problems and Falwell dismantled the organization in 1989.

Bob Jones
During its existence the Moral Majority experienced friction with other evangelical leaders and organizations as well as liberal leaders and organizations. For example, Bob Jones particularly sought to challenge the public position of the Moral Majority and was known to make public statements that the Moral Majority was an instrument of Satan. Such rivalries affected the Moral Majority's grassroots efforts. In South Carolina, the Moral Majority had no presence because Bob Jones University's religious network had already organized the state's independent Baptists. The tension between Falwell and Pat Robertson also affected the Moral Majority.

Norman Lear
On the ideologically opposed side, Norman Lear's liberal organization People for the American Way was formed with the specific intention of opposing the platforms of the Moral Majority and other Christian Right organizations.

Moral Majority Coalition
In November 2004, Falwell revived the Moral Majority name for a new organization, the Moral Majority Coalition. The intent of the organization is to continue the "evangelical revolution" to help conservative politicians get elected. Referring to the Coalition as a "21st century resurrection of the Moral Majority," Falwell, a father of the modern "religious right" political movement, committed to leading the organization for four years. He died on May 15, 2007.

Notable people within the movement

 * Ed Dobson
 * Jerry Falwell Sr. (founder)
 * Robert Grant
 * Jesse Helms
 * D. James Kennedy
 * Beverly LaHaye
 * Tim LaHaye
 * Trent Lott
 * Jerry Prevo
 * Judith A. Reisman
 * Pat Robertson
 * James Robison
 * Charles Stanley
 * Cal Thomas
 * Richard Viguerie
 * George Wallace
 * Paul Weyrich
 * Penny Pullen

title: Moral Majority


text:
Talk:Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

B-class?
I've increased the banner assessments to B-class. If you agree, please increase the Vital Articles assessment likewise. -- Ssilvers (talk) 23:54, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
 * @Remagoxer, courtesy ping in case you didn't see this comment. – Epicgenius (talk) 17:46, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
 * While TBV isn't directly linked to the Vital Articles WikiProject, I've taken a short look over the article and agree that this should be re-assessed as B - therefore, I have done so accordingly. Thanks for your work on this article!  Rema goxer  (talk) 18:15, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Annex
User:Epicgenius: In the section called "1970s and 1980s", we say that the annex design was 11 stories. Everywhere else we say ten-stories. Was there a change, or is the 11-story mention just wrong? Also, in the Architecture section under the Annex heading, we say that Gwathmey analyzed Wright's design but built the tower on "the 1968 wing's steel framework". Can we say what major differences/similarities there are between the final annex and Wright's original annex design? Does it have the same dimensions Wright envisioned? Does it still contain the artists' studios, apartments and balconies? -- Ssilvers (talk) 05:56, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * @Ssilvers, thanks for bringing this up. The annex was originally planned as an 11-story structure, but it was downsized to 10 stories during the planning process due to opposition by residents. I'll add some detail about the annex later, but basically, the 1968 wing was demolished except for the steel framework, and six stories were added on top of the existing frame. The apartments and studios in Wright's design were removed before the museum even opened; the current annex contains galleries and administrative spaces. I don't know if the current annex has the same dimensions as Wright's design. – Epicgenius (talk) 16:31, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the change you already made on this. Any further clarification you can make of the major changes to the Annex from Wright to 1968 to present will be much appreciated. -- Ssilvers (talk) 17:32, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Collection
We say that the museum "can only show about 300 works at a time", but the source is from 1992. Is this still true after the Annex was completed and ban exhibiting works? -- Ssilvers (talk) 20:11, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

 * We also say "620 of the remaining works were designated as part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection". Do we mean that only 620 of the original collection remains, or that there are more that remain, but only 620 were so designated? -- Ssilvers (talk) 20:23, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
 * @Ssilvers, sorry, I did not see this before. In regards to the "620 remaining works" sentence, officials designated 620 works as part of the collection. I'm not sure whether 620 of the original collection remain, in which case all of the original collection would've been designated.In regards to "about 300 works", the source actually says about 6% of the collection (compared to about 3% before the renovation). There were about 5,000 works at the time. – Epicgenius (talk) 17:27, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

 * Thanks, User:Epicgenius. Please update if you find a newer source stating how many works can now be displayed since the Annex and other additions were added.  Also, if you ever see further clarification on the 620, please add it.  -- Ssilvers (talk) 18:17, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Impact and retrospective commentary
In the Design section's 2nd paragraph, we have a nice quote by Goldberger about the design. But the 3rd paragraph under "Impact and retrospective commentary" could use something like it. Anyhow, good job on upgrading the article! -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:45, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I'll work on adding something to the third paragraph of "Impact and retrospective commentary", as that paragraph is mostly a description right now. Also, thanks - hopefully this could be improved further to GA in the future. – Epicgenius (talk) 17:28, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Lead
I've partially reverted this edit, which updated the attendance while removing large parts of the museum building's description in the lead. The edit summary was removed duplicate text / updated attendance figures, but I have two issues with this.
 * 1) The museum's architecture isn't actually mentioned anywhere else in the lead. It is a major enough aspect of the article; the building was given National Historic Landmark and UNESCO World Heritage Site designations, and it is an official city landmark. Furthermore, the building itself is the reason this museum has a separate article from, say, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.
 * 2) The lead is supposed to summarize the body, per WP:LEAD. In that sense, it intentionally duplicates the body.

Thus, I've restored the description of the architecture. – Epicgenius (talk) 14:25, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

 * Thank you, Epicgenius. I support your revisions. -- Ssilvers (talk) 16:27, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Incept date
The foundation began in 1937 but the museum was opened in 1939. However, the infobox uses the 1937 date. Viriditas (talk) 21:02, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

 * Agreed and changed. -- Ssilvers (talk) 02:32, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree with this change as well. I think this may be a holdover from a time when the article discussed the foundation at length as well, but the first museum space didn't open till 1939. – Epicgenius (talk) 13:16, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum