Few museums are as defined by their architecture as the Guggenheim, whose spiraling white rotunda is arguably its most famous work of art. As the institution marks a milestone anniversary, it faces a familiar challenge: honoring a building that competes with everything hung inside it.

Curators have long grappled with how to install exhibitions along the museum's continuous ramp, a space that flatters some art and fights others. The fictional retrospective now on view was designed specifically to work with the spiral's flow rather than against it.

The anniversary has prompted reflection on the museum's outsized influence on how art is displayed and experienced. Love it or resist it, the Guggenheim's radical design still shapes the way visitors move through — and think about — a museum.