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For well over a century, the Guggenheim name has been synonymous with a spirit of innovation and a track record of results. Delivering innovative solutions to the complex challenges facing clients is a hallmark of Guggenheim’s legacy of success.

Our history stems from Guggenheim Brothers, the Guggenheim family business dating back to the late 1800s. Guggenheim Partners began with the mission of creating exceptional value for our clients by applying the principles that made the Guggenheim family one of the most successful innovators, investors, and business managers in American history.

Those principles entailed engaging highly talented people, challenging them to think creatively, and encouraging them to achieve extraordinarily high standards in their fields of expertise. Today, we continue to uphold the principles of the Guggenheim family by promoting a firm culture that values initiative, encourages ideas, and rewards success.

 

Family Milestones

 

1881

Meyer Guggenheim paid $5,000 for a one-third interest in two Colorado lead and silver mines. By the end of World War I, the family business controlled more than 80% of the world’s supply of silver, copper and lead.

1882

With seven of his sons already engaged in the family business, Meyer Guggenheim formed M. Guggenheim’s Sons. The firm would later reorganize into Guggenheim Brothers.

1912

The Guggenheims created their own industrial relations bureau, dedicated to bringing reforms in the mining industry including pension plans, housing projects, hospitalization for employees, and accident compensation.

1929

Daniel Guggenheim embraced a vision of going where no man had gone before and, on the recommendation of Charles Lindbergh, bankrolled Robert Goddard’s obscure research on rockets. Goddard’s work eventually led to the development of modern rocketry.

1940

Alicia Patterson, Harry Guggenheim’s wife, founded the publication Newsday, a paper geared toward the rapidly growing suburban community of Long Island. Twenty-five years after it began publication, the circulation was 400,000 copies daily.

1941

Solomon Guggenheim engaged the respected architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design a unique contemporary art museum to display his vast personal collection of non-objective art. The partnering of these two visionaries resulted in one of the most famous and recognizable structures in the world, itself a work of non-objective art.

1953

Harry Guggenheim adhered to the family formula by enlisting the services of the most preeminent horse trainers of the time to successfully achieve his goal of winning the Kentucky Derby with a horse named Dark Star.

1964

The Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation issued a ten-year grant to the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution to aid in the development of exhibits and other museum activities.

1979

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation took ownership of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the first international institution in the Guggenheim collection of museums.

1980s

The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation engaged three renowned land planners doing innovative work with neo-traditional town planning to collaboratively land plan Daniel Island, a 4,500-acre island near Charleston, SC.

1997

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation together with the Basque government engaged the renowned architect Frank Gehry and challenged him to design a new Guggenheim Museum that would be so innovative and spectacular that it would transform Bilbao, Spain from a struggling city into a vibrant cultural destination.

 

Guggenheim Family Foundations

Several members of the Guggenheim family established foundations to serve a variety of cultural and scientific causes, including research and education in the arts and sciences.

Established in 1924, the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation aimed to advance the well-being of mankind throughout the world. The Foundation provided two grants for rocketry education centers at Princeton and the California Institute of Technology, and created the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Aviation Safety Center at Cornell University. By 1960, the Center at Cornell had undertaken research on collision avoidance, crash fire prevention, occupant protection, altimeter and instrument error, and in-flight explosions. The Foundation also donated the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Space Theater to the American Museum of Natural History for use in conjunction with the Hayden Planetarium. The Foundation closed in 2011.

Established in 1926 by Daniel and Harry Guggenheim, the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics focused on promoting aeronautical education in universities, colleges, and secondary schools, and among the general public; supporting the extension of fundamental aeronautical science; and assisting in the development of commercial aircraft and aircraft equipment. Among the accomplishments of the Fund were the establishment of eight schools of aeronautical engineering and making significant contributions to the development of commercial passenger-carrying air transport service in America, including the creation of the first commercial airline, run by Western Airline Express. The Fund also succeeded in engaging renowned names in the field of aviation, like Elmer Sperry and General Jimmy Doolittle, to improve upon various flight instruments to address the issues pilots flying in fog and other hazardous weather conditions, such as the turn and bank indicator, the artificial horizon, and the directional gyrocompass. The Fund closed down in 1930 after fulfilling its founding purposes.

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation awards fellowships to men and women who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. Guggenheim fellows have been recipients of numerous prestigious awards including 112 Nobel prizes and over 220 Pulitzers. Additionally, Guggenheim fellows have won 169 National Book Awards, recognizing the best in American Literature, and 10 Fields Medals, the highest scientific award for mathematics. Notable recipients of Guggenheim Fellowships include Langston Hughes, Martha Graham, Ansel Adams, Alice Walker, Allen Ginsburg, Mary McCarthy, Vladimir Nabokov, Henry Kissinger, John Updike, and Cormac McCarthy.

The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation sponsors scholarly research on problems of violence, aggression, and dominance, and also encourages related research projects in neuroscience, genetics, animal behavior, the social sciences, history, criminology, and the humanities. Grants have been made to study aspects of violence related to youth, family relationships, media effects, crime, biological factors, intergroup conflict related to religion, ethnicity, and nationalism, political violence deployed in war and sub-state terrorism, as well as processes of peace and the control of aggression. The Foundation has supported Jane Goodall’s research into the lives of Chimpanzees in Tanzania, studies of cooperation and conflict in Israeli kibbutzim, and the role of dominance in children’s cultures.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is committed to innovation by collecting, preserving, and interpreting modern and contemporary art, while simultaneously exploring ideas across cultures through exhibitions, educational and curatorial initiatives, publications, and digital platforms. Dedicated to engaging both local and global audiences, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation has built an international community of architecturally and culturally distinct museums. Initiated in the 1970’s by the addition of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, this international network has since incorporated the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (opened 1997), the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin (1997–2013), and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, currently in development. Each museum in the Guggenheim collection combines distinguished architecture with great artworks, a tradition that has become a Guggenheim hallmark.


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