The purchase of a property next to where the permanent collection is housed allowed the expansion of the indoor and open air exhibition areas, with the creation of a new sculpture garden and the moving of the cafe. The entire operation allowed the exhibition rooms to be refurbished for temporary exhibitions and the service areas for handling works of art improved. The museum’s cultural offer was enhanced by a new space dedicated to education for children, a made-to-measure area for the effective promotion of art by means of activities added to the visit.

A small building next to the current premises with its own portion of garden houses the new cafe. Planning a space with difficult proportions – a long, narrow body completely closed on one of the two long sides – was not an easy challenge, considering the high number of visitors. Those patronising the cafe can thus make use of a room on the ground floor, well lit by the numerous windows facing the internal courtyard, which make it into a kind of jardin d’hiver, as this area probably was during the nineteenth century.
The cafe inevitably appropriates the open area, partly shaded by a self-supporting gazebo in white painted steel, and partly by the sculptures in a continuum of quite singular internal and external spaces.
Every transformation, even if partial, is reflected in the whole museum organism.
The creation of the new bar thus entailed the redesign of the shop that faces onto the embankment, its store rooms and its bordering entrance. A redefinition of the interiors of the shop, from the furnishings to the new paving and lighting system, highlights the displays of goods and improves movement in the two rooms.
The reorganisation of the vertical connections with the alteration of an existing stone staircase and the installation of a lift allowed the entrance used by staff and guests to be dignified and the top floor used for offices made accessible, also to the disabled.

About thirty years after the opening of the museum, a structured maintenance programme to adapt it to current needs was necessary, considering the high influx of more than 400,000 visitors every year. Various matters were looked at over a period of just a few months’ closure of the museum wing housing the permanent exhibition: maintenance of the alla Veneziana floors, distinguished by mother-of-pearl inserts, replacement of all the climate control and lighting systems, along with consolidation of the roof beams, necessary for the increasingly frequent installations and events. The central theme of the project was aimed at retaining the domestic aspect of the museum, but responding to the need for the above renovations. The only one of the operations carried out that is also visible to the non-expert public is the new lighting, designed with careful attention and in association with the museum’s conservator. It is provided by a particular Led product made by Zumtobel, which ensures an excellent chromatic return and uniform brightness of the rooms, evoking a domestic atmosphere and at the same time respecting the safety parameters on light irradiation of the works.

The project highlights the ‘signs’ of the fragmentation of the small gardens, which retain their border walls, providing small exhibition areas, unusual for a museum garden, but much visited and appreciated for their private nature and the singular testimony of the fragmentation of Venice’s building fabric. Plants typical of the US, but also widespread in Italy, emphasising the trait d’union that Peggy Guggenheim represented for the two countries, define the areas capable of highlighting the works contained in them and become a centre of attraction for lovers of art and of plants.

The increasingly frequent use of the Palazzo Vernier roof terrace posed questions of safety, solved with plant elements and the installation of a metal handrail of essential lines and low visual impact so that the gaze rests always on the monumental facade and the works exhibited.

The facade of the eighteenth-century Palazzo Venier was subject to careful conservation work that brought back its ‘unfinished’ look by removing the ivy and old fillers and cleaning the stone. New windows in black painted steel, matched with the repair of the historic gratings, partly in iron and partly in cast iron, completed the restoration. Careful conservation work on the facades of the buildings facing the Rio delle Torreselle renewed the appearance of the doorway dating from the Byzantine era and new breathable plaster replaced the old fragments, while maintaining the existing chromatic variations.

The purchase of the third floor of this building allowed the moving of the offices, which had remained on the basement floor of the Palazzo Venier, to be completed. The necessary extensions of the areas dedicated to this purpose were made, also creating a staff kitchen and a new meeting room. So this was a project of restoration, extension and furnishing.

The new entrance created the year before allowed the Barchessa to be upgraded by converting the old ticket office into an exhibition area. This is a restricted area, but important from a spatial point of view as it reinstates a visual cone that from the courtyard, with Falkenstein’s door/sculpture work and the Byzantine well head, ends in the sculpture garden and new entrance. It is a space that, with the return of the big window to the public, accentuates the continuous interaction between interiors and exteriors that is one of the characteristics of this museum. The work was completed by the necessary plant adaptations (lighting and climate control), replacement of the windows and restoration of the alla Veneziana terrazzo floor in resin, which has the peculiarity of having been a prototype, one of the first of its kind, produced by the Bisazza and Guggenheim partnership.

The first stage in implementing the Masterplan was completed with restoration of the recently purchased building and its garden. The project called for the creation of a new ticket office, which was finally provided with a space, its own courtyard, in which groups can be welcomed and the queue of visitors accommodated without blocking the public areas. The courtyard is actually already itself a museum thanks to the sculptures that are placed there and a project that, opening visual perspectives over the pre-existing areas, with a mix of new and recovered elements, anticipates some themes that reappear after entering. In addition to the ticket office, a cloakroom and other visitor services were created on the ground floor, while on the first floor the temporary exhibition area was expanded and a second bookshop created at the end of the visit. Spaces and materials were conceived and selected in close cooperation with the management, in a logic of continuous references to the characteristics of Venetian architecture, suitably reviewed on the basis of the times and the place. Completion of the works was marked by the ‘Peggy e Kiesler. The collector and the visionary’ exhibition, curated by Dieter Bogner and Susan Davidson.

The project for expanding the spaces of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection was translated into a systematic programme of works in successive stages, which were carried out without closing the complex to the public. The design of the museum was rebalanced with the insertion of an entrance courtyard onto which the ticket office and storage-cloakroom unit opens. A more fluid pathway incorporates the cafe, the bookshop and the exhibition areas: permanent in Palazzo Venier and temporary in the gardens and on the first floor of the wing on the embankment. Visitor comfort and conservation of the works are ensured by the necessary plant adjustments. Finally, large areas have been set aside for the management and administrative area, of no secondary importance.

The need to expand the exhibition area led to the drafting of a plan to roof the internal terrace: a removable structure in iron and glass, with sliding windows. In this way the cafe, a service that is thought essential for the visitors, could be definitively moved to the terrace and an interior room freed up.

The museum context requires the planning of spaces, services and at times solutions to small management problems that do not directly concern the exhibition areas. A simple safety staircase, removable in winter, for example, provides access to the terrace on the Grand Canal during cultural events, allowing expansion of the areas fully available to the Collection and flexibility in the use of the spaces.
The difficulty of finding suitable spaces in the museum for creating a bookshop that would respond to visitors’ needs led to the design of a small sales outlet along the exhibition pathway and a larger, more complete one outside with independent access from the fondamenta.

Although only used for maintenance and transporting works, the Palazzo Venier jetty on the Grand Canal retains its symbolic value in recalling the unique nature of Venice with its access to homes directly from the water. Replacement of the foundation piles and wooden decking periodically renews the appearance and use of this traditional feature.

The programme for the gradual expansion of the Collection spaces began following agreements made with the Fondazione Levi, owner of the buildings facing onto the Fondamenta Venier. The creation of a doorway in the boundary wall between the gardens of Palazzo Venier and the Levi wing was a first step towards setting up a museum pathway through different spaces, perceptively fragmented yet conceptually linked. The works are displayed in the new wing and partly also in the gardens, while a refreshment stop and public sales outlet provide services that are indispensable to a modern exhibition space.

The necessary works to upgrade the plant and restoration of some particularly deteriorated elements ensured the efficiency of the museum spaces, provided with a new entrance.

The first works to provide the Collection spaces with all the services needed for complete use of the museum began. Conservation of the works of art is ensured by a new microclimate control system, while on the ground floor the areas for the administrative and management staff were expanded with zones suited to the various activities. A new floating floor covers the reinforced floor of the Palazzo Venier terrace, venue for occasional cultural events.