Growing Up Guggenheim: A Personal History of a Family Enterprise

Description

Inside one of America’s great dynasties. Growing Up Guggenheim by Peter Lawson-Johnston — grandson of Daniel Guggenheim, president of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation — is an intimate memoir of privilege, responsibility, and legacy, and what it means to steward a family name.

From Swiss immigrant Meyer Guggenheim’s mining fortune to Solomon’s passion for modern art — and Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic spiral museum on Fifth Avenue — Lawson-Johnston traces how a family enterprise became a global cultural institution, including the 1997 Bilbao expansion that transformed a city and redefined the museum world.

Published in 2005, this candid, elegantly written memoir offers an insider’s view of family dynamics, museum leadership, and philanthropy at the highest level. From the mining fortune to the museum empire, it is essential for art lovers, museum professionals, and anyone fascinated by the families behind the world’s great institutions — a rare insider’s account.

Growing Up Guggenheim: A Personal History of a Family Enterprise by Peter Lawson-Johnston is an intimate memoir from inside one of America’s great dynasties. A grandson of Daniel Guggenheim who served as president of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the author writes with rare authority about privilege, responsibility and legacy — and what it means to steward a family name.

From Swiss immigrant Meyer Guggenheim’s mining fortune to Solomon R. Guggenheim’s passion for modern art — and Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic spiral museum on Fifth Avenue — Lawson-Johnston traces how a family enterprise became a global cultural institution, including the 1997 Bilbao expansion that transformed a city and redefined the museum world.

Published in 2005, this candid, elegantly written memoir offers an insider’s view of family dynamics, museum leadership and philanthropy at the highest level. Essential for art lovers, museum professionals and anyone fascinated by the families behind the world’s great institutions — a rare insider’s account.