In early January 1927, Baroness Hilla von Rebay set sail from Trieste aboard the President Wilson<sup>1 2</sup>, a passenger ship bound for New York, taking with her paintings by her lover and protege Rudolf Bauer. She was on a momentous mission to establish no less than a museum for <em>non-objective</em> art in New York.<br><br>Von Rebay had become enamoured with non-objective art ten years earlier in Zurich when her compatriot Hans Arp introduced her to works by the Russian Wassily Kandinsky, the German Paul Klee, and the Russian-Frenchman Marc Chagall, amongst others.<br><br>Non-objective art was groundbreaking in its use of geometrical shapes and line to depict non-figurative forms (objects not found in the natural world). The theoretical foundations for the movement were provided by Kandinsky in his book <em>Concerning the Spiritual in Art</em> (1910). Kandinsky, an expressionist, heralded the art form as offering a window into an inner reality. Von Rebay was captivated by this notion. Referring to non-objective art as a ‘higher calling’<sup>3</sup>, she began to intensify her own commitment to the genre, both as an artist and as a patron. <br><br>In New York, she met with industrialist Solomon R. Guggenheim upon her arrival, a meeting that edged von Rebay closer to her goal. Under her artistic guidance, Guggenheim began collecting non-objective art and developed the same passions for the paintings. The collaboration culminated with the establishment of the <em>Museum of Non-Objective Art</em> in 1939 to house the collection; von Rebay became its first director.<br><br>Following Guggenheim’s death in 1949, the museum was renamed the <em>Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum</em>. The Guggenheim foundation would later go on to open several museums around the world.<br>