When Guggenheim Abu Dhabi opens on December 11, it will carry a family name that has helped shape modern art for nearly a century.
Long before visitors queued outside its museums, mining magnate Solomon R Guggenheim was buying abstract paintings with the encouragement of artist Hilla Rebay in the 1920s, building a collection that would eventually need a home of its own.
Decades later, his niece Peggy’s support was integral to artists who were struggling to make a living. In 1943, she offered Jackson Pollock $150 a month against future sales, allowing him to leave his job as a museum custodian and paint full-time. She gave him his first solo exhibition at her New York gallery, Art of This Century, and commissioned Mural for the entrance to her home.
Solomon’s collection, including his many works by Wassily Kandinsky, found a permanent home in Frank Lloyd Wright’s New York museum, which opened in 1959, 10 years after his death. By then, Peggy had settled in Venice, where she opened her home and collection to visitors.
The Guggenheim’s ambitions eventually extended beyond those collections. In 1997, its Frank Gehry-designed museum opened in Bilbao, helping transform the Spanish city into an international destination for art. An agreement to establish a museum in Abu Dhabi followed in 2006, bringing the institution to a region whose artists would form an important part of its collection.
That expansion has since brought Solomon’s great-great-grandson Dillon Lawson-Johnston to the UAE. After he first began visiting through the museum project, he has since made Abu Dhabi his home along with his wife and two children.
And through his personal pursuits, his continuing work with the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation and his strong relationship with the upcoming Guggenheim Abu Dhabi team, he hopes to play an integral part in furthering his family's legacy in his adopted home.
“I don't want to just be a passive inheritor of a name,” Lawson-Johnston says. “I want to play a very meaningful role in what the Guggenheim name will mean in the future.”
Lawson-Johnston grew up visiting the Guggenheim in New York, but it was only in his 20s that he began looking more closely at the history behind it.
What interested him was how his relatives had recognised talented people and given them the support to pursue their work. He saw a pattern that extended beyond art, into fields such as aviation and publishing, and began considering where his own experience might fit.
But whatever it would be, he knew he had to be bold. He learnt that most clearly from his grandfather Peter Lawson-Johnston, a former president and chairman of the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation.
“I’ve spent a lot of time with him, and he really was the one who championed Bilbao and Abu Dhabi,” Lawson-Johnston says. “I think a lot of people don’t know that, but he was the one who really took the risk to do that.”
His grandfather believed a museum could help change a city’s cultural life. And once Dillon saw Abu Dhabi's cultural ambitions long into the future, he knew he had to be a part of it.
“Guggenheim Abu Dhabi was my entry point,” he says. “It was my introduction to this place, and the reason I started spending time here, and that really opened my eyes to the people here, the country itself, the ambition of the leadership.”
Making Abu Dhabi home
Having worked at Untitled Entertainment and talent agency UTA, he co-founded the investment firm Guggenheim Brothers Media in 2024. The UAE’s investment in creative industries encouraged him to explore whether he could build the business here. Conversations led to a partnership with Abu Dhabi’s Ethmar International Holding, announced in January, and he decided to settle in the city.
But even as his business expands, being the only Guggenheim family member living in Abu Dhabi has never left his mind.
“I think there’s a huge sense of responsibility for me to represent the family in a certain way as we continue to figure out what’s next,” he says.
The museum, with its opening date now less than two months away, is being developed through a partnership between the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi and the foundation. Its Gehry-designed building on Saadiyat Island will be the largest in the Guggenheim network, housing art from the 1960s onwards, with an emphasis on work from West Asia, North Africa and South Asia.
“Abu Dhabi itself will need to feel distinctly like it’s from Abu Dhabi, and it will,” Lawson-Johnston says. “But it’s also part of a larger cultural dialogue.”
Lawson-Johnston’s foundation work gives him a way to participate in that dialogue. On the Wanasa Circle, he shares observations about emerging artists and developments in those regions with curators in New York. The group advises and supports their work, while curators make the decisions about acquisitions.
On the Young Collectors Council, also in New York, he takes part in discussions about programmes that bring younger audiences into museums. He and his wife Chloe were among the co-chairs of its 2025 fund-raising party, which supported the museum and the council’s art fund.
He sees scope for his own contribution in how the family’s work has evolved. Collecting led to supporting artists and then building institutions, each widening the ways people could encounter art. He does not describe himself as a major collector, but wants to help more people take part in that cultural life.
“Being engaged with the arts does not have to be focused around collecting per se,” he says. “It can be supporting creatives, being part of a community. It can be figuring out how next generations engage or creating access.”
After the opening
His ambitions to partner on initiatives with the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi concern what happens once visitors can walk through its doors. He expects people to come from around the world, and wants to help younger Emiratis and other UAE residents develop a lasting relationship with the museum through its programmes and changing exhibitions.
“I think cultural programming is huge,” he says. “We live in a world now where the next generation is experiencing culture digitally before they ever experience it in real life.”
His experience in entertainment has made him interested in how an encounter online can lead someone to seek out an artist or visit a physical space. One idea he would like to pursue is inviting digital creators to spend time in the museum and share what they find with their followers.
“I’m just trying to be a strategic partner where I can around how we can drive the next generation into the museum and engage with it,” he says.
But, importantly, he also is excited to help share with visitors the story of the family behind the institution.
“I want to be a champion of telling the family story,” he says.
“I think when you start to learn more about the history of the family and the ambitions and how it all came together, you’re more inclined to go and spend time there and feel like you’re connected. There’s a certain sense of belonging.”
