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17 Jul 2019
Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim museum added to UNESCO World Heritage List
By Tom Walker
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The Guggenheim is one of only 24 sites in the US to feature on the UNESCO list
Photo: Shutterstock/Tinnaporn Sathapornnanont
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The World Heritage Committee has inscribed the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, US on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
The museum is one of eight Wright-designed US buildings to have made the list, after the American architect's 20th century works were awarded the honour. The others are the Unity Temple (Illinois), Frederick C. Robie House (Chicago); the Taliesin (Wisconsin); Hollyhock House (Los Angeles), Fallingwater Pennsylvania), the Herbert and Katherine Jacobs House (Wisconsin) and Taliesin West (Arizona).
The Guggenheim is now one of only 24 sites in the US to feature on the list. UNESCO considers the international importance of a potential World Heritage Site based on its "outstanding universal value".
The art museum – located on NY's famed Fifth Avenue, in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan – is the permanent home of a continuously expanding collection of impressionist, post-impressionist, early modern and contemporary art.
It was first established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting and moved to the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building In 1959.
Wright designed the cylindrical building, which is wider at the top than the bottom, as a "temple of the spirit".
It features an innovative ramp gallery, which extends up from ground level in a long, continuous spiral along the outer edges of the building and ends just under the ceiling skylight.
“This recognition by UNESCO is a significant way for us to reconfirm how important Frank Lloyd Wright was to the development of modern architecture around the world,” says Barbara Gordon, executive director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy.
“There are nearly 400 remaining structures designed by Wright.
"Our hope is that the inscription of these eight major works also brings awareness to the importance of preserving all of his buildings as a vital part of our artistic, cultural and architectural heritage.
"All communities where a Wright building stands should appreciate what they have and share in the responsibility to protect their local—and world—heritage.”
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