Philip Rylands, Peggy Guggenheim Collection

By Fiona Scott Lazareff

12 May 2015

It's difficult to think of a more enviable job than being the director* of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, so one is naturally curious to know how and why an Englishman was chosen. In fact. Philip Rylands, unlike most directors of top museums, does not have a long list of cultural institutions on his CV. Rather, he was introduced while doing his PhD from Cambridge University in Venice to Peggy Guggenheim by Victor Stanley, the British vicar. "We're both part of the Anglo American community. Apart from knowing Peggy as a personal friend and having studied modern art, I was also accustomed to dealing with the local authorities when I was involved in “Venice In Peril” in the 1970s," explains Rylands.

When Peggy died, the museum was closed as it always was in winter in those days. Back then, her palazzo, Venier dei Leoni and its garden were home both to her and to her collection. Today, there are some 320 works including her Oceanic and other Primitive works, with all of the masterpieces of her collection on display. Peggy Guggenheim was both an art collector and a dealer—the earliest works to enter her collection came from her gallery in Cork Street London, which she opened in 1938, Her collection was rather fully formed by the time she opened her gallery in New York City where she lived during the Second World War, before coming back to Europe, to Venice in 1949 when she bought the palazzo and its garden.

©  Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. Ph. Matteo De Fina

"She lived in the palazzo for 30 years," explains Rylands, “and from as early as 1951 opened her museum to the public. In 1976, three years before her death, Peggy donated her palazzo and art collection to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation of New York.” Today, the Venice museum is funded through ticket sales, income from the shop and café as well as donations and sponsorships. The number of visitors has increased steadily from 35,000 visitors in 1975, to almost 400,000 in 2014, making it the most visited museum of modern art in Italy. Thanks to Foundation acquisitions, there are now close on 500 works resident in Venice: "We are sometimes offered works of art as gifts,” explains Rylands.

When deciding on the two to three exhibitions which are held each year, Rylands says “that they are generally a reflection of Peggy Guggenheim’s life and career, her collection, or her époque.” 

©  Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. Ph. AndreaSarti/CAST1466

With its rich heritage of architecture and art dating back to the 9th century, Venice doesn’t strike one as primarily a centre for contemporary art, but since the Biennale was founded in 1895, and especially after World War II, the importance of this has grown. Today, with the recent additions of the Prada foundation, the opening of the Palazzo Grassi by François Pinault as well as important exhibitions organised by the Vedova Foundation and the Cini Foundation for example, Venice is amongst the top spots for contemporary art. "Peggy Guggenheim's ambition was to spread the knowledge of 20th-century art, the avant-garde. She was altruistic, she had a mission. And this was what she wanted the Guggenheim Foundation to continue to do after her death."

"She was romantically attached to Venice, having stayed here for long period in the 1920s with her first husband Laurence Vail," says Rylands. “Her first encounter with modern art took place at the Sunwise Turn bookshop in New York in 1921, when she was shown a painting by Georgia O’Keeffe. Later she was to be an important patron of living artists —for example, she found a plaster by Giacometti and asked him to cast it in bronze. It was to be his first. During the war in New York, she gave several young American artists their first solo exhibitions: Baziotes, Hofmann, Motherwell, Robert de Niro Sr., Hare and Still for example. Her greatest achievement was her discovery of Jackson Pollock. James Johnson Sweeney and Mondrian recommended him and typically she listened and took their advice."

©  Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. Ph. David Head

It's difficult to imagine what a day in the life of Philip Rylands would look like: "I have a ten-minute walk to work. Like Venice as a whole, this has a very human dimension to it. You meet friends and acquaintances as you're walking, something quite impossible if you have to drive the M25 to get to work.”

Having seen the swarms of tourists, I ask him if Venice might be losing its local flavour and becoming a massive tourist attraction: “The loss of communal society in Venice is vivid, but one can't say that Venice is dying: yes, the native inhabitants are fewer and fewer, but tourism, high culture, universities and so on employ huge numbers of people. There is a large international community of people with second houses here.”

Before I leave, I ask him if he can recommend some good addresses for Diventonians: Ai Gondolieri, just behind the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Sestiere Dorsoduro, 366) or Taverna La Fenice, near the Theatre (Sestiere San Marco, 1939). "If you have deep pockets, you should head to Ristorante Quadri,” which serves Italian classics with a modern twist in a lavish, romantic setting overlooking St Mark's Square (Piazza San Marco, 121). 

If you want to get to know Venice "off the beaten track" he suggests working your way from the Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo, a church in the Castello district of Venice, towards Sant'Elena, passing by San Francesco della Vigna and the Arsenale where the tourists begin to run out. Or again, to the north part of the city, where there are two magnificent churches, one Gothic and one Baroque—the Madonna dell’Orto and the Gesuiti.

* Mr. Rylands was the collection’s founding director and remained at the helm of the institution for 37 years. In 2017, he was replaced by Karole Vail.