From collecting to reframing: non-Western works in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is a museum of European and American art of the twentieth century situated in Palazzo Venier dei Leoni in the city of Venice, Italy. While the name Peggy Guggenheim continues to be synonymous with the collecting of modern art, Guggenheim turned her attention to the collection of non-Western objects, including those of Africa, Oceania and the indigenous Americas in her late years. The following thesis sheds light on this episode in Peggy Guggenheim’s collecting as well as the presence of non-Western works in her collection, their current placement within the museum and the potential issues it unleashes. The temporary exhibition Migrating Objects: Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, held from October 2021 to January 2022, sought to demonstrate the discursive gaps between the modern art displayed in the museum and the non-Western works. However, in the usual dynamics of the museum, it appears as if minimal curatorial efforts are done to ensure that the aforementioned breaches are reduced. With an emphasis on two pre-Hispanic figurines belonging to the shaft tomb tradition of Western Mexico, this thesis will seek to present a proposal that strives to deconstruct and restructure the discourse assigned to these pieces.