Peggy Guggenheim and the Birth of Mid-Century Modernism
Evening Lecture
24 November 2022
Palazzo Venier dei Leoni Venice
Friends with the leading cultural figures of her day – including Cecil Beaton, Jean Cocteau, Barbara Hepworth, Scott Fitzgerald, Ian Fleming, Djuna Barnes and Igor Stravinsky – Peggy Guggenheim was photographed by Man Ray and André Kertesz, took advice from Marcel Duchamp and married – among others – the artist Max Ernst. She moved with ease between the social elites of New York and the bohemia of Paris.
This talk asks why it was that – seemingly out of the blue – Guggenheim started collecting contemporary art in the 1930s? What impact did her subsequent galleries in London and New York have on artists and the wider art world? How and why did her name become inextricably linked with the city of Venice? And how did a New York heiress play such a pivotal role in the making of mid-century Modernism?
Jacky Klein is an art historian, publisher, writer and broadcaster, specialising in modern and contemporary art. After studying at Oxford University and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, she worked as a curator at a number of leading galleries: Tate, the Barbican, the Courtauld and the Hayward. In 2008, she moved sideways into the world of art publishing, first as Commissioning Editor at Thames & Hudson, then as Executive Editor at Tate Publishing and subsequently as Director of HENI Publishing, a small independent arts publisher.
She is herself the author of a bestselling book on British artist Grayson Perry (Thames & Hudson, 3rd edition 2020) and co-author of a number of other titles including Alfred Cohen: An American Artist in Europe (Ben Uri Gallery / Alfred Cohen Art Foundation, 2020), Body of Art (Phaidon, 2015) and What is Contemporary Art? (Thames & Hudson, 2012), a children's guide to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which has been translated into 11 languages.
Jacky has presented and contributed to a range of television programmes for the BBC, and is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4's arts review programme, 'Front Row'. She has appeared on Channel 5, the Travel Channel and Bloomberg TV, and has written and presented a number of online films and livestreams for Tate, Christie's and the Art Fund. An experienced lecturer in museums, galleries and at literary festivals, she has taught at a number of arts institutions including University College London, Christie’s Education, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Royal Academy of Arts. She was a Trustee of the UK Association for Art History from 2013-2023, and was most recently Associate Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute on their Masters programme, 'Curating the Art Museum'.
Jacky Klein