Peggy Guggenheim: The Patron Who Made Art a Gathering

In 1940s New York, Peggy Guggenheim turned her gallery, Art of This Century, into far more than an exhibition space. Designed by Frederick Kiesler with movable panels, shifting lights, and avant-garde energy, it became a meeting ground for Europe’s exiled modernists and America’s emerging Abstract Expressionists.

Guggenheim wasn’t just a collector; she was a connector. Guided by Marcel Duchamp and Herbert Read, she trusted instinct over fashion, giving Jackson Pollock his first major commission, hosting Kandinsky’s first London solo show, and showing women artists in her 1942 Exhibition by 31 Women. Her gatherings proved that vision and generosity can shape movements. Like today’s best hosts, Guggenheim knew that creativity thrives where boundaries blur between artist and audience, Europe and America, art and life.

By turning her spaces in New York and later Venice into living laboratories for art, Peggy Guggenheim showed that when you open your doors to daring ideas, you don’t just host culture, you help create it.

Gertrude Stein: The Salon That Shaped Modern Art

Long before creative hubs and member clubs, Gertrude Stein turned her Paris apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus into a gathering that defined an era. Every Saturday night, artists and writers like Picasso, Matisse, Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald crowded her living room to debate, discover, and inspire one another.

With her brother Leo, she bought daring works like Matisse’s Woman with a Hat when others dismissed them, and she championed Picasso’s early Cubism long before it was understood. Her conviction and curiosity made her salon a launchpad for modern art.

From Stein’s gatherings, today’s hosts can learn that great events are about creating space for bold ideas and meaningful connection. Stein built bridges between Paris and New York, artists and writers, conversation and culture. She proved that when a host brings courage, curiosity, and community together, history follows.

Lady Ottoline Morrell: The Society Host Who Made Ideas Collide

Long before “networking” became a word, Lady Ottoline Morrell mastered the art of bringing great minds together. In early 20th-century London and Oxfordshire, her homes from her Bloomsbury townhouse to her Jacobean mansion Garsington were open houses for the era’s writers, artists, and thinkers. Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Siegfried Sassoon, and D.H. Lawrence all passed through her drawing rooms, drawn as much by her intellect as by her generosity.

Ottoline believed conversation could change the world. She encouraged artists like Roger Fry, helping him select works for his groundbreaking Post-Impressionist exhibition, and gave refuge to war resisters and poets alike. Though she was often caricatured, even cruelly, by the very people she hosted, her warmth and curiosity never waned.

For today’s hosts, Ottoline’s story is a reminder that the best gatherings aren’t about status but about creating spaces where ideas and emotions mix freely. She opened her doors not to impress, but to connect, proving that hospitality, when rooted in heart and curiosity, can shape culture as powerfully as art itself.

Elsa Maxwell: Turning Parties into Performances

Before event planners and PR gurus, Elsa Maxwell made the art of gathering her stage. Born in Iowa in 1883 and raised in California, she rose from playing piano in theaters to becoming the world’s most famous professional hostess, a woman whose name became synonymous with sparkle, wit, and invention.

By the 1920s, Maxwell was throwing legendary parties across Europe for royalty, artists, and high society. She kept her guests amused with playful twists, famously inventing the scavenger hunt, a party game that swept through 1930s social circles.

In an age when women rarely shaped public culture, Maxwell did it through conversation, humor, and showmanship. Her gatherings led to a career as a columnist, songwriter, and radio host, where she continued connecting people through her lively stories and sharp social insight.

For today’s hosts, Elsa Maxwell’s legacy is clear: the best gatherings are memorable because they make people feel part of the story. She didn’t just entertain; she made connection itself a kind of performance.