Two simultaneous exhibitions featuring masterworks from all the Guggenheim museums -- the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin and the Guggenheim Bilbao -- will be held at the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle and the Kunstmuseum Bonn.

Under the title of "The Guggenheim Collection," which will run from July 21 until January 7 next year, the exhibition at the Kunstmuseum will present the history of art from the late 19th century through the early years of the 20th century.

The earlier period will include works by Degas, Seurat and van Gogh while the 20th century will be plotted through the paintings of Picasso, Léger and Kandinsky to works by Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg and Donald Judd. Contemporary exhibits from the 1990s onwards will include photography and video installations.

Art and architecture on the road

The second exhibition "The Guggenheim: Architecture" at the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle, will run from August 25 until November 12 this year and include 25 projects by 15 architects who have designed projects for the Guggenheim Foundation, many of which have been built and some that have not yet been realized.

The architecture exhibition will be the first to show architectural commissions and design competitions commissioned for the Guggenheim and will feature designs by Frank Lloyd Wright, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Jean Nouvel.

The arrival of "The Guggenheim: Architecture" is the latest of a series of exhibitions honoring the museum's hosting of big museum collections which started 14 years ago with a show of works from New York's Museum of Modern Art. Since then, the museum has welcomed exhibitions from places like the Tokyo National Museum and the Metropolitan Museum.

A fraction of Guggenheim's holdings

While many of the Guggenheim's greatest pieces will be in show in Bonn, the extensive collection will be just a fraction of the number of works the Guggenheim Foundation actually has in its museums. Over the past 16 years the Foundation's collections have doubled in size and the traveling exhibitions in Bonn will represent less than four percent of its total holdings.

Such is the rate of expansion of the global network of Guggenheim museums and its collections that the foundation is looking to extend its reach further. Earlier this month, the government of Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, announced its plans to build a 300,000-square-foot museum to be called the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.

The new museum will be designed by Frank Gehry, the man behind the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain whose works will also be exhibited in Bonn.