On November 21, 2026, the Royal Academy of Arts in London opens the exhibition Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector. It focuses on the eighteen months between January 1938 and June 1939, when an American collector opened her first gallery on Cork Street and, along the way, gave Britain its first solo exhibition of Kandinsky’s work. This guide follows her path and translates it into something everyday: how to start choosing prints for your own wall when you have neither a museum nor a million-dollar budget, but would like to collect seriously.
Cork Street 1938–1939: eighteen months and more than twenty exhibitions around the corner from the Royal Academy
The Royal Academy begins its presentation with a date: it’s January 1938, and Peggy Guggenheim has just opened her first gallery on Cork Street, a stone’s throw from the Royal Academy in Piccadilly. According to e-flux, which published the exhibition’s press materials on April 16, 2026, the venue was called Guggenheim Jeune and was located at 30 Cork Street. It operated from January 1938 to June 1939, about eighteen months, and held more than twenty exhibitions.
That’s an unusually intense pace. More than one exhibition a month in a gallery that lasted less than two years. The program included a solo exhibition by Jean Cocteau, an exhibition of works created by children, including those by a very young Lucian Freud, and three firsts that would still make an exhibition reviewer raise an eyebrow. It was a place where a future collector learned by exhibiting.
Quick facts: The exhibition Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector is on view at the Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, London, from November 21, 2026, to March 14, 2027, in the Jillian and Arthur M. Sackler Wing. Press view November 18–20. It is produced by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and curated by Grażina Subelytė and Simon Grant. According to Artlyst, tickets cost £17.
Kandinsky, collage and the sculpture scandal: three firsts in British art history
Royal Academy highlights three firsts achieved by Guggenheim Jeune. The first was the first solo exhibition of Wassily Kandinsky’s work in Britain. The second was Britain’s first group exhibition devoted to collage. The third was an exhibition of contemporary sculpture that, according to the Royal Academy, “became a national scandal.” That last phrase is worth pausing over: a sculpture exhibition in London in 1938 could spark a public debate still worth talking about almost ninety years later.
The artists in the exhibition reflect the same breadth. The Royal Academy and e-flux mention, among others, Eileen Agar, Jean Arp, Salvador Dalí, Barbara Hepworth, Rita Kernn-Larsen, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore, Cedric Morris, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and Yves Tanguy. It’s a list where geometric abstraction, Surrealism, and British modernist sculpture meet, and it says something important about how an early collector works. She didn’t choose one style. She followed her curiosity and let the collection take shape through her choices.
Two of the names already feature in our earlier guides. If you’d like to read about how Kandinsky became the father of abstraction and why his color forms still captivate, you’ll find it in Wassily Kandinsky 160 Years in 2026. The master of the grid, Piet Mondrian, whom MoMA celebrates in 2027, features in our Mondrian guide. On a wall at home, the two work as opposites: Kandinsky’s swirling motion against Mondrian’s perpendicular calm.
Venice first, then London, New York last: the exhibition’s journey and Peggy’s own words
The exhibition didn’t start in London. It premiered at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice on April 25, 2026, at Dorsoduro 701–704, and ran there until October 19. It then travels to the Royal Academy and on to the Guggenheim in New York, where, according to e-flux, it runs from April 16 to September 12, 2027. Around a hundred key works, including paintings, sculptures, works on paper, photographs, dolls, and archival material, have been loaned.
The Royal Academy puts it roughly like this: eighty-eight years after her gallery opened, Peggy Guggenheim and the artists she championed will make their mark in London once again. The catalogue is published by Marsilio Arte. There is also a quote from a 1976 interview that shows where life took her: she had been in love with Venice for fifty years, and if she didn’t live there, she would live in the English countryside. The tone isn’t particularly museum-like. It’s a woman who did as she pleased.
What collectors actually do: four moves from Cork Street that work on an ordinary wall
The following is our interpretation, not the exhibition’s. But anyone who follows what Guggenheim Jeune showed will see a pattern that can be applied at home. The first move is to choose a direction and stick with it for a while. Guggenheim showed abstraction and collage rather than everything at once. Anyone who buys a poster every week without a plan will soon have a wall that looks random, while anyone who buys three in the same color family will have a collection.
The second move is to mix formats and media. Sculpture, collage, and painting were shown in the same spaces. At home, that means a large 70x100 poster can hold a conversation with small 21x30 prints on a shelf or dresser, and a wooden frame can be followed by a metal one without making the wall feel cluttered, as long as the colors work together. The third move is to give new artists a chance. Guggenheim showed artists including Kernn-Larsen, Agar, and Morris, names many people didn’t know at the time. You don’t have to buy the most expensive piece. You need to buy what makes you curious.
The fourth move may be the most important: look at what you’ve hung up. A collection becomes a collection only when you return to it. Hang a poster where you see it every morning over coffee, and you’ll quickly learn what you like and what you get tired of.
Tip: Start with a single 50x70 poster on a wall you see every day, and leave it up for three months before buying the next one. Then you’ll know whether the direction feels right. After that, buy a couple of smaller prints in the same color palette, and you’ll have your first collection without having to guess.
"A collection doesn’t start with advice. It starts when you hang something up and look at it every day."
Abstract, geometric, surreal: motifs from Cork Street in Bozetto’s collection
If you want to hang something in the same spirit as what the Guggenheim showed in 1938, there are several ways in. Abstract posters are the broadest category, where fields of color, brushstrokes, and shapes take center stage without depicting anything. For something more restrained and geometric, explore graphic posters, where lines and surfaces take the foreground. And Bauhaus posters take you back to the school where Kandinsky taught and where grids, primary colors, and function became a language of their own; our Bauhaus guide tells the whole story.
If you’re looking for artists with a long history, artworks by famous artists are a natural place to start, but we want to be clear that the exhibition in London isn’t a list of what we sell. The aim here is to describe an approach, then help you find pieces that suit it. An abstract piece in red, blue and yellow works well beside something in black and white. A surrealist piece with dreamlike imagery and unexpected proportions often has the most impact on its own against a bare wall.
When it comes to size, a good rule of thumb is to let the largest piece take up the most space. A 70x100 above the sofa or bed can anchor an entire room. Several smaller pieces work best when grouped so that the gaps between them are even, about three to five centimeters between the frames. That creates the rhythm a curator would have given the display on Cork Street.
There’s a practical benefit to the exhibition traveling so far. The same selection of works is seen by three very different audiences in Venice, London and New York, showing how a collection can be read in different ways depending on the room it hangs in. The same goes for your home. The same three posters look different in a bright living room and a dark study, and it’s only after you’ve tried both that you’ll know where they belong. Feel free to move them around before drilling or sticking anything in place.
Another lesson lies in the time span. Guggenheim Jeune lasted only eighteen months, but what happened there has inspired an exhibition of its own almost ninety years later. It says something about how long a collection needs to gain significance: often much longer than you think, but rarely longer than you decide to give it. If you start now with a single poster, in ten years you’ll have a whole story to show.
Go to London or bring the idea home
If you’re traveling to London, the ticket costs 17 pounds, according to Artlyst, and the exhibition runs for just over four months, giving you plenty of time even if you’re planning a spring trip. The Royal Academy is at Burlington House in Piccadilly, a few minutes’ walk from Cork Street, where it all began. If you go there, you can walk past number 30 and take a look at a street now best known for its galleries. If you stay at home, the same principle applies: look for what you like rather than what’s right.
And if you want to understand more exhibitions shaping how we hang art right now, read about gallery walls from the ground up, which shows how to build a composition step by step. Then all that’s left is to hang, look, and learn.
When you’re ready to get started, browse our posters, choose a direction, and take the first step toward a collection that’s your own.