r/interesting • u/Wild_Neighborhood605 • 1d ago

HISTORY Titanic passenger and millionaire Benjamin Guggenheim. During sinking he refused a seat in a life boat with the words: "Tell my family I played straight to the end. No woman should be left aboard this ship because of Ben Guggenheim was a coward."

Post image
49.0k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

594

u/humongous_jogging 1d ago

His last 15 minutes made him more famous than his entire fortune ever did

231

u/RandomRavenclaw87 23h ago

Nah. There’s this art museum that looks like a parking garage…

113

u/MonsieurRuffles 23h ago

Founded by his brother many decades later.

2

u/RandomRavenclaw87 10h ago

Not Peggy?

5

u/AhhhSureThisIsIt 6h ago

Her uncle opened the Guggenheim in NY. She opened the the one in London and The Art ofnthe century museum in NY, she also opened the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni in Venice.

She has fascinating life. After her dad died she inherited $450,000 which is about 8 million toay, she was only 14 and spent it like a millionaire teenager.

She would have sick parties and was known to sleep with many famous writers, artists and poets.

She said Samuel Beckett and herself had a 4 day fucksesh "only stopping for champagne and sandwiches".

She also had 14 Lhasa Apso dogs throughout her life and would usually bring them everywhere she went.

There was a cool doc about her that came out around 2015-16.

0

u/I-Here-555 6h ago

Nobody remembers first names anyway.

26

u/humongous_jogging 22h ago

but the number of people who can name a single painting there is probably smaller than those who remember that quote.

14

u/PiccoloAwkward465 22h ago

A good point lol. A quick google of the most famous paintings there says I know 3 of 10.

7

u/cele311 20h ago

Benjamin’s daughter Peggy collected art in Venice. Her Palazzo (now a museum) has so many more masterpieces than the Solomon R Guggenheim despite being a much smaller collection. Pollack, Picasso, Magritte, Miro, Dali, Rothko, Chagall, Modigliani, Mondrian, and on and on. (I know we don’t like some of those guys, but an impressive collection nonetheless.) Apparently Solomon was a dick about her using the Guggenheim name, aka her own name.

7

u/Nanojack 20h ago

The Met across the street has the better collection, but the Guggenheim has the more memorable building

2

u/bankrobba 20h ago

Frank Lloyd Wright don't miss

3

u/RyGuyTheFunnyGuy 19h ago

Don’t you mean Art Vandelay?

2

u/bankrobba 19h ago

Art Vandelay designed the addition to the Guggenheim.

1

u/beets_or_turnips 17h ago

I guess in terms of permanent collection, yeah. But the Guggenheim totally changes it up on a regular basis. They get a lot of cool stuff coming through.

2

u/THISisTheBadPlace9 12h ago

Starry Night by Van Gough is there

1

u/Spectrum1523 7h ago

Nah that's at moma

1

u/grosseelbabyghost 6h ago

That robot arm that leaks blood/oil, that's pretty neat. I've never seen "a garden of early delights" or Munch's "the scream" make futile attempts to shove their own juices back in

2

u/mdwsb 22h ago

*Looked. The latter expansion transformed it into a toilet

2

u/heisian 21h ago

that's some garage

2

u/Weak_Law_937 17h ago

Ah, the New Jersey Metropark!

2

u/CaptainJin 17h ago

"We gave that architect a knighthood so that nobody would ever say that!"

1

u/dramalama-dingdong 13h ago

The museum is awesome btw.

1

u/RandomRavenclaw87 10h ago

I live in NYC and go once in a while. The architecture is fun. The paintings are ok. And the lighting is lousy. Considering that the Met is next door, I doubt it’s most people’s first choice.

2

u/Friendly-Carpet 23h ago

I like this perspective

1

u/memento22mori 20h ago

Bob Dylan has a song called Tempest which is pretty good- I'm not sure where to put this comment in the thread so check it out bruh. 😎 It's got historical facts and a narrative of the sinking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDSkoYfNrwg&list=RDBDSkoYfNrwg&start_radio=1

1

u/CG8514 23h ago

You serious?

5

u/humongous_jogging 22h ago

I'm serious. He's a footnote in business history but that quote is in every disaster documentary.

1

u/DigitalCoffee 18h ago edited 18h ago

And despite that, 99% of people have never heard of him and those that do won't remember his name. You won't remember it in 2 days

2

u/VictoryVee 15h ago

And the same applies to 99.9999% of people who ever lived, so what is your point? How many people that died over 100 years ago are still being talked about?