Guggenheim Publications

As a vital part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s mission as an educational institution, the Guggenheim Museum’s Publications Department publishes books and catalogues to document its exhibitions and collections. Guggenheim publications are renowned for the high quality of their design and production, as well as for the depth of their scholarship.

The Publications section of www.guggenheim.org was redesigned in 2011 to offer researchers and visitors greater access to the museum's publications, including extended book excerpts, selected essays, and archival materials (guggenheim_publications_1.jpg). A Joomla backend integrates the section seamlessly with the existing website’s content management system. The front-end design features a rotating slideshow and multiple image carousels to highlight the breadth of content found within the section. In the “Books” and “From the Archives” categories, a flipping book feature allows users to zoom and enlarge texts and photos for greater detail (guggenheim_publications_4.jpg).

The fully-searchable site allows users to search by keyword, date range, and subject, as well as to filter results by title, author, and publication date (guggenheim_publications_2.jpg). Each publication has a detail page with an image of the publication, a citation, a description, as well as related books, archival items, and essays from within the site (guggenheim_publications_3.jpg). Many items also highlight sample spreads and text excerpts.

The “Books” category features new and popular Guggenheim releases as well as print and e-purchase options. In the “Essays” category, essays on a wide variety of art historical topics can be purchased as e-books. Essays were selected to make various in-demand out-of-print titles available again, particularly with students in mind.

In “From the Archives” researchers can browse through key museum titles dating back to its founding in 1937. Many out-of-print catalogues were scanned with the help of Internet Archives and can be read in-full online, such as one of the museum’s first publications, Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection of Non-Objective Paintings. Flipping through each page of the book, one can find how Hilla Rebay, the museum's first curator, introduced the collection and unfolded the early thought processes of understanding the importance of non-objective painting, stating, “Non-objective art is the cosmic sense, beautified by genius. Its lawful arrangement is the eternal rhythm that one perceives and feels, but cannot see.”

A regularly updated area titled the Syllabus highlights key themes, topics, and trends found in the archives. An entry on the designer Herbert Matter, for example, explains how Matter’s innovations in typography and photomontage elevated many of the Guggenheim’s catalogues in the 1960s. The Syllabus also offers suggestions for additional readings well as links for further exploration (guggenheim_publications_5.jpg).

Launched with over 125 unique items, the site continues to grow as new books are published, essays are made available in e-book format, and additional archival materials are scanned.