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"  Peggy Guggenheim was known for collecting lovers, dogs, and art. But not necessarily in that order. While a passion for the latter ran in the family (her uncle Solomon founded the Guggenheim Museum in her native New York), it wasn&amp;#039;t until Guggenheim was nearly 40 years old and a divorced mother of two living in Europe that Marcel Duchamp advised her on her first purchase, a small piece by Jean Arp in 1937, thereby sparking a lifelong obsession. By the time World War II broke out, Guggenheim was a fervent patroness. She vowed to &amp;quot;buy a picture a day,&amp;quot; which helped many artists stave off ruin in the early days of the war. As tensions escalated and she made plans to leave Europe, she shipped her entire collection, including a Kandinsky, several Klees, and a Mondrian, to the U.S. for safekeeping. Guggenheim also arranged passage out of Europe for others \u2014 among them her future husband, Max Ernst, whom painter Yves Tanguy playfully dubbed Peggy Guggenheim&amp;#039;s Consort No. 3,812. Although she was glib about marital infidelity (when asked how many husbands she&amp;#039;d had, the twice-married Guggenheim quipped, &amp;quot;D&amp;#039;you mean my own or other people&amp;#039;s?&amp;quot;), her loyalty to artists was unwavering. An avid earring collector, she famously wore one designed by Tanguy and another by Alexander Calder to the opening of her New York gallery (Art of This Century, in 1942) to show she supported both equally. When she settled in Venice after the war, Guggenheim, who preferred to spend her money on art rather than fashion, invested in two chic outfits: one by her beloved Fortuny and later one by textile designer Ken Scott. She also commissioned painter Edward Melcarth to create bat-wing and butterfly eyeglasses. Along with her pouf of white hair, red lipstick, and extravagant earrings, they became her signature. Her look has influenced designers including Karl Lagerfeld, who channeled it for Chanel&amp;#039;s latest cruise collection. (Incidentally, he donated a pair of her sunglasses he&amp;#039;d bought at auction to her museum after using them in this shoot.) The show was in Venice, where Guggenheim spent her final decades touring the Grand Canal in her gondola, the last in the city to be privately owned. Instead of the traditional cavalli (sea-horse-shaped hardware), the ropes of her craft were tied to Lhasa apso statuettes in honor of the 14 canines that partially inspired her nickname, La Dogaressa. Since Guggenheim&amp;#039;s death in 1979 (she was interred next to her dogs), the Peggy Guggenheim Collection has been open to the public in her home, the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, which was once the residence of Marchesa Luisa Casati, herself known to \u00E9pater le bourgeois. It remains one of the most important collections of 20th-century art. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/trends/a410/peggy-guggenheim-venice-0909/>