Peggy Guggenheim Collection. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is a modern art museum on the Grand Canal in the Dorsoduro sestiere of Venice, Italy. It is one of the most visited attractions in Venice. The collection is housed in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, an 18th-century palace, which was the home of the American heiress Peggy Guggenheim for three decades. She began displaying her private collection of modern artworks to the public seasonally in 1951. After her death in 1979, it passed to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, which opened the collection year-round from 1980. The collection includes works of prominent Italian futurists and American modernists working in such genres as Cubism, Surrealism and abstract expressionism. It also includes sculptural works. In 2017, Karole Vail, a granddaughter of Peggy Guggenheim, was appointed Director of the collection, succeeding Philip Rylands, who led the museum for 37 years. The collection is principally based on the personal art collection of Peggy Guggenheim, a former wife of artist Max Ernst and a niece of the mining magnate, Solomon R. Guggenheim. She collected the artworks mostly between 1938 and 1946, buying works in Europe in dizzying succession as World War II began, and later in America, where she discovered the talent of Jackson Pollock, among others. The museum houses an impressive selection of modern art. Its picturesque setting and well-respected collection attract some 400,000 visitors per year, making it the most-visited site in Venice after the Doge's Palace. Works on display include those of prominent Italian futurists and American modernists. Pieces in the collection embrace Cubism, Surrealism and abstract expressionism. During Peggy Guggenheim's 30-year residence in Venice, her collection was seen at her home in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni and at special exhibitions in Amsterdam, Zurich, London, Stockholm, Copenhagen, New York and Paris. Among the artists represented in the collection are, from Italy, De Chirico and Severini; from France, Braque, Metzinger, Gleizes, Duchamp, Leger Picabia; from Spain, Dali, Miro and Picasso; from other European countries, Brancuși, Max Ernst, Giacometti, Gorky, Kandinsky, Klee, Magritte and Mondrian; and from the US, Calder and Pollock. In one room, the museum also exhibits a few paintings by Peggy's daughter Pegeen Vail Guggenheim. In addition to the permanent collection, the museum houses 26 works on long-term loan from the Gianni Mattioli Collection, including images of Italian futurism by artists including Boccioni, Carra, Russolo and Severini, as well as works by Balla, Depero, Rosai, Sironi and Soffici. In 2012, the museum received 83 works from the Rudolph and Hannelore Schulhof Collection, which has its own gallery within in the building. The collection is housed in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, which Peggy Guggenheim purchased in 1949. Although sometimes mistaken for a modern building, it is an 18th-century palace designed by the Venetian architect Lorenzo Boschetti. The building was unfinished, and has an unusually low elevation on the Grand Canal. The museum's website describes it thus: Palazzo Venier dei Leoni's long low facade, made of Istrian stone and set off against the trees in the garden behind that soften its lines, forms a welcome caesura in the stately march of Grand Canal palaces from the Accademia to the Salute. The palazzo was Peggy Guggenheim's home for thirty years. In 1951, the palazzo, its garden, now called the Nasher Sculpture Garden, and her art collection were opened to the public from April to October for viewing. Her collection at the palazzo remained open during the summers until her death in Camposampiero, northern Italy, in 1979; she had donated the palazzo and the 300-piece collection to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1976. The foundation, then under the direction of Peter Lawson-Johnston, took control of the palazzo and the collection in 1979 and re-opened the collection there in April 1980 as the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. After the Foundation took control of the building in 1979, it took steps to expand gallery space; by 1985, all of the rooms on the main floor had been converted into galleries. the white Istrian stone facade and the unique canal terrace had been restored and a protruding arcade wing, called the barchessa, had been rebuilt by architect Giorgio Bellavitis. Since 1985, the museum has been open year-round.