Peggy Guggenheim, a young collector's dream

Before Venice, before Jackson Pollock, and before the emergence of her public image as one of the most influential collectors of the 20th century, Peggy Guggenheim moved through London trying to create a space for the European avant-garde. That period is the focus of Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector, on view at the Royal Academy of Arts from 21 November 2026 to 14 March 2027. The exhibition reconstructs the time Guggenheim spent in the British capital between 1938 and 1939, when she opened the Guggenheim Jeune gallery on Cork Street in Mayfair. In less than two years, the gallery hosted exhibitions devoted to figures such as Wassily Kandinsky, Jean Cocteau and leading European Surrealists, becoming one of the principal centres for international modern art in pre-war London. According to curators Gražina Subelytė and Simon Grant, the exhibition focuses not only on the artworks themselves but also on the process through which Peggy Guggenheim shaped her identity as a collector and cultural promoter. Letters, photographs, catalogues, archival documents and artworks trace the moment in which Guggenheim began building an international network of artists, critics and dealers that would later have a profound impact on the history of 20th-century art. The exhibition originated at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, where it was presented in spring 2026, and will later travel to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2027. Its London presentation carries particular significance, however, as it returns Guggenheim’s story to the city where her first independent exhibition project took shape. The exhibition also addresses the political and cultural climate of Europe on the eve of war. Many of the artists supported by Guggenheim were refugees, exiles or figures fleeing European totalitarian regimes. The London gallery became not only a commercial space but also a meeting point for an artistic community shaped by political instability and displacement. Rather than celebrating Peggy Guggenheim as a glamorous icon of collecting, the exhibition appears more interested in revealing the practical and often precarious work involved in building a cultural scene: negotiations with artists, the organisation of exhibitions, financial difficulties and the attempt to introduce Surrealism and abstraction into a London still largely attached to more traditional models.