CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/2/2026

The origins of the world's most renowned collector in new release 'Peggy Guggenheim in London'

American artist and educator John Ferren’s 1937 “Tempora” is reproduced from Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector—the first book ever dedicated to the pioneering collector and philanthropist’s formative days in London, where she opened her first gallery, the Guggenheim Jeune, in 1938. Published to accompany the traveling exhibition making stops in Venice, London and New York through 2027, this 272-page hardcover is a must-have for anyone interested in the history of twentieth-century avant-garde circles. “Encouraged by her friend, the Irish writer Samuel Beckett, who urged her to champion contemporary art as ‘a living thing,’ Guggenheim deepened her commitment to supporting the avant-garde,” curators Gražina Subelyte and Simon Grant write. “Over the course of eighteen months, from January 1938 through June 1939, Guggenheim Jeune quickly became one of the central places to see the latest developments in art by both local and international artists, many of whom were affiliated with abstraction and Surrealism. This inclination also reflected her early guidance from the French-born artist Marcel Duchamp…” The gallery would close in June of 1939, just three months before London officially entered World War II and Guggenheim would be forced to flee to France, and then back to her native New York.