It rises in the heart of Manhattan <br />like a giant inverted cupcake. <br />The building, <br />a circular symphony in concrete, <br />enfolds as a nautilus shell, <br />a spiral design <br />in which continuous spaces <br />flow freely one into another. <br /> <br />The Guggenheim Museum <br />of New York opened in 1959, <br />begirding an immense space. <br />Frank Lloyd Wright envisioned <br />it at first as an upside down <br />Zikkurat. <br />Its horizontal ribbons <br />are wider at the top <br />than at the bottom. <br /> <br />The museum <br />has no separate floor levels. <br />Instead it curls like a corkscrew, <br />a helical ramp of breathing plasticity, <br />a celebration of structural unity, <br />a single continuous floor <br />spiraling upward uninterrupted, <br />wrapped around an open court. <br /> <br />The paintings on the walls <br />stare in silence, colored, composed <br />clemently, or vexed, <br />versatile icons <br />in a stunning shrine of spirit <br />steeping, gurgling, percolating <br />in the frozen music of architecture. <br /> <br />The structure, <br />an organic opus <br />of Wright’s trailblazer design, <br />harmonizes the building with art <br />and with the urban environment, <br />so that interior and exterior merge, <br />each becomes part of the other, <br />and thus the outside comes inside <br />and the inside goes outside.<br /><br />Paul Hartal<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/guggenheim/
