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"We love it and we are very excited that it’s turning 50 years old and it looks better than ever,” said Karole Vail, assistant curator at the Guggenheim Museum. “It is true that people don't always realize that there is actual art to see on the walls or on the floor, but as long as they come here, then maybe we can gear them and direct them to the exhibitions, and then hopefully they'll come back for not only the building, but also the collections and exhibitions on view."

The Guggenheim Museum is one of the most famous museums in the world. As it gets ready to celebrate its 50th anniversary, Vail says it's important to look back at its original mission, and one of its earliest supporters, Hila Rebay.

“She had hoped to have a building designed and built in her own lifetime,” Vail explained. “And she eventually, for various reasons, contacted Frank Lloyd Wright to build a monument or a temple to the spirit. She asked him in 1943, but as we know the museum took many years. In fact, it took 16 years before it was finally erected in 1959.”

Wright wasn’t a fan of Manhattan or cities in general, so he built the museum as close to nature as possible.

“The museum was built near Central Park,” said Vail. “Central Park was actually very important in both Wright's mind and actually Rebay's mind because it was close to other wonderful institutions like the Metropolitan Museum. At the same time, the Guggenheim turned out to be this exceptional architectural entity.”

The architecture is integrated with the art on display, including the works of Vasily Kandinsky.

“Kandinsky promoted an art form called non-objective painting,” said Tracey Bashkoff, curator of collections and exhibitions at Guggenheim Museum. “It’s a type of abstraction where there is really no recognizable imagery. Anything tied to everyday life is absent from the painting, and so it’s really about utopian goals and spiritual aims for artwork to be transformative and to bring people to a higher understanding.”

The Guggenheim will celebrate its 50th birthday on Oct 21st with free admission to the museum. Both art lovers and the curious will be greeted by a new Kandinsky exhibit. The Russian-born abstract painter’s works have been such a part of the institutions history, organizers say it’s only fitting he’d be featured for the celebration.

“Kandinsky's work is at the core of our collection,” Bashkoff said. “Before we were the Guggenheim Museum, we were the Museum of Non-Objective Painting and we were really centered around a really particular kind of abstraction, which is epitomized by Kandinsky's work. And so for us he is really the reason that we are here and the building exists.”

Today, all kinds of modern and contemporary art on display: paintings, sculpture, and installation. So, curators say those who come just to wind their way up and down Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiral ramp will have plenty to see along the way.

For more information on these events, go to Guggenheim.org.