ROME.- The Guggenheim will open a special exhibition at the historic Palazzo delle Esposizioni in the heart of Rome on February 7, 2012. Showcasing more than 60 exemplary works from the museum’s permanent collection, Guggenheim Collection: The American Avant-Garde 1945–1980 traces the key upheavals in art during the decades after World War II and highlights the often radical challenges to traditional notions of art and art making that emerged during the period. Through paintings, sculptures, photographs, and installations, the exhibition examines one of the most important periods in American art, beginning when Abstract Expressionism brought worldwide attention—and sometimes controversy—to a circle of New York artists, including Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Over the next few decades, the United States remained a global center for modern art as various aesthetic practices took root and proliferated, from Conceptualism and Minimalism to Pop art and Photore