On March 2, 1936, the first public exhibition of Solomon R. Guggenheim's collection outside New York opened at the Gibbes Gallery in Charleston, South Carolina. The show presented 128 paintings from the collection that Guggenheim and Hilla von Rebay had built after Rebay redirected him from old masters toward abstract and non-objective art. The event mattered because it publicly tested a collection that would soon become institutional: in 1937 Guggenheim created the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, and in 1939 the Museum of Non-Objective Painting opened in New York. The Gibbes showing therefore sits between private collecting and the museum-building project that shaped one of the best-known modern art institutions.
The exhibition helped move Guggenheim's avant-garde holdings from private patronage toward a public museum mission.
