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Abstract

The twentieth-century matron, dealer, and gallery owner Peggy Guggenheim crafted both a highly public image and a personal identity through her writings, collecting, and exhibition practice. Through her outrageous social behavior, outspoken interviews with the press, and scandalous memoirs, Guggenheim presented herself as a bohemian libertine, with little or no serious intentions other than to live as brazen and unfettered a lifestyle as possible. However, by all accounts other than her own, Guggenheim was an avid learner and teacher, and her anti-intellectualism and playful irreverence belied her ultimate concern with garnering recognition as an important figure in the art world. Ultimately, Guggenheim's rejection of more conventional modes of collecting and display in favor of the role of social impresario and fashionable eccentric enabled her to produce and promote her own image as an iconic and pioneering figure in the history of patronage.

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The Maverick Collector: The Method in the Madness of Peggy Guggenheim

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