GuggenheimMuseuminNewYork, who then ran the La Jolla (now San Diego) Museum of Contemporary Art, which was then the region's top contemporary art museum.
Not since Frank Lloyd Wright completed the concrete spiral of the GuggenheimMuseuminNewYorkin 1959 has an art museum so shocked and intrigued observers or received so much preopening publicity.
Fleeing the Nazis, Richter was brought to lecture inNewYorkin 1940 by Hilla Rebay, the German painter and collector who helped found the GuggenheimMuseum.