Central Park’s development along 5th avenue had the most extraordinary homes that was were built for the wealthiest New Yorkers. We focused on the Frick Collection and the Guggenheim Museum, specifically on the strategy used to display their art pieces through circulation and spaces.

Located on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, at 1 East 70th Street, the Frick Collection houses the many art pieces of industrialist Henry Clay Frick. A very successful man in his many businesses, he gained an enormous amount of money and decided to buy this land and build his mansion which he intended it to become what we know now as the neoclassic Frick Collection later. It holds many old master paintings and luxurious furniture that he had collected prior to even moving to New York City. Moving more into the upper east side of Manhattan, to 89th Street, we run into the Guggenheim Museum. This museum holds a collection of impressionist, post-impressionist, early modern and contemporary art. The museum was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright as a cylindrical building that gets wider and wider as you circulate from bottom to the top or narrower as you go from the top to the bottom.

The spaces of each museum are very different. In fact, the Guggenheim is not your typical museum space. However, starting with the Frick Collection, you have the typical circulation of walking into different rooms. It is more of a scattered or unorganized and free circulation. Many of the rooms were joined because it was originally a house, which made it quite difficult to make a circulation that was sequential. Despite its circulation, the art itself was displayed beautifully. Mainly through natural lighting. Some of the rooms had skylights that really brought life to the paintings and the spaces they inhabited. Another way the spaces were lit was with chandeliers. With the Guggenheim, it has a more forced and organized circulation when viewing the art. It is intended for the user to start from the top and make their way to the bottom. Using a circular path, you can hardly miss any of the art. Every level has its room for more art which has the typical layout of a gallery, but you always end up back on the exciting, circular movement of the museum. The space itself, as well as the art, is lit by many light fixtures but the main source is the skylight.

In my opinion, the Guggenheim is a more exciting museum mainly because of the way the museum was designed in terms of its circulation. Because of it, I successfully looked at every piece of artwork.