Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

See also: Guggenheim family

The front of the Guggenheim Museum from 5th Avenue New York City

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is a nonprofit corporation founded in 1937 by philanthropist Solomon R. Guggenheim and artist Hilla von Rebay. The first museum established by the foundation was the "Museum of Non-Objective Art", which was housed in rented space on Park Avenue in New York. Since then, it has established a global network of museums:

• The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York
• The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice
• The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Bilbao
• Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin (built in cooperation with the Deutsche Bank)

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York––the first permanent museum to be built––is sometimes called simply "the Guggenheim." Beginning with the Guggenheim Museum in New York, a modern spiral building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the tradition of hiring prominent architects for its museum designs has continued. The Guggenheim Bilbao was designed by Frank Gehry, and the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada was designed by Rem Koolhaas. The Guggenheim Foundation developed a reputation for hiring major architects and building bold designs. Some critics claim (or complain) that the Guggenheim buildings are more famous than the art works on exhibit inside them.

The museums exhibit primarily "high" modern and postmodern art, but some branches have also exhibited commercial art. For example, the Solomon R. Guggenheim has shown exhibitions of Giorgio Armani suits, and motorcycles. The latter exhibition, The Art of the Motorcycle, was later moved to semi-permanent display at the Guggenheim Las Vegas until it closed in 2003.

History

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, along the Nervión River in downtown Bilbao

The first Guggenheim museum, opened in 1939 under the direction of Baronness Hilla von Rebay, was called the "Museum of Non-Objective Painting" in an automobile showroom at East 54th Street in midtown Manhattan. Within a few years, work began on the design of a new permanent home for the collection. The architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, conceived the space as a "temple of spirit", which would facilitate a new way of looking at the modern pieces in the collection. Named the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum after its founder, the landmark building opened in 1959 to large crowds and critical controversy.

Peggy Guggenheim, Solomon's niece, donated her art collection and home in Venice, the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, to the foundation in the mid-1970s. Upon her death in 1979, the collection was opened to the public and is managed by the foundation.

During the 1992 renovation and expansion of the Frank Lloyd Wright building, the Guggenheim opened a small Guggenheim Museum SoHo in SoHo. This space was kept after the main museum was re-opened, but closed in 2002 due to an economic downturn.

Thomas Krens, director of the Guggenheim Museum, led the rapid expansion that created several new museums, most notably the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, which opened in 1997. Designed by Frank Gehry, the museum is a centerpiece of the revitalization of the Basque city of Bilbao, Spain. The Basque government funded the construction, while the Foundation purchased the artworks and manages the facility. The museum has been hailed as one of the most significant cultural buildings completed in the 20th century. It is considered a successor to the tradition of design innovation and excellence started by Wright's 1959 Guggenheim in New York.

Also in 1997, the Foundation opened a small gallery in the Unter den Linden area of Berlin, Germany, as the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, in cooperation with the Deutsche Bank. In 2001, the Foundation opened a new museum in Las Vegas to showcase highlights of the collections of the Guggenheim and the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia and the Sackler Center for Arts Education on the campus of the original New York building.

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, in Venice

The foundation planned for another, much larger Guggenheim museum on the waterfront in lower Manhattan and engaged Frank Gehry as the architect. His essentially complete designs for the building were showcased in 2001 at the Fifth Avenue museum, however these plans were disrupted by at least two distinct factors. First, the museum experienced financial problems in the economic downturn of the early 2000s. Second, the September 11, 2001 attacks prompted reconsideration of construction plans in lower Manhattan.

Foundation leaders and city officials of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil announced another location in April 2003. The structure was to be designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, and financed by the city of Rio de Janeiro. However, it August 2003, a Brazilian court ruled the contract between the foundation and city invalid.

On January 19, 2005, the philanthropist Peter B. Lewis resigned from his position as chairman of the foundation, expressing his opposition to Krens' plans for global expansion of the Guggenheim museums. He said the foundation should "concentrate more on New York and less on being scattered all over the world." Lewis had been the largest donor in the history of the Guggenheim. Tensions continued, however and on February 27, 2008, Thomas Krens also resigned from his position in the Guggenheim Foundation. In announcing his resignation, the board stated he would remain an advisor for international affairs.

After a three-year search, Richard Armstrong became the fifth director of the Guggenheim Foundation on November 4, 2008.

Collaborations

YouTube Play

In October 2010, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and YouTube, in collaboration with Hewlett-Packard and Intel, presented YouTube Play, A Biennial of Creative Video. More than 23,000 videos from 91 countries were received in response to an open call for submissions. From the initial 23,000, Guggenheim curators selected a shortlist of 125 videos, from which a jury, including artists Laurie Anderson and Takashi Murakami and the musical group Animal Collective, picked the top 25 works. The selections were featured at an event at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York on October 21, 2010, during which time the videos were projected on the exterior of the Frank Lloyd Wright building and inside the museum’s rotunda.

The top 25 selected works were on view at the Guggenheim Museum in New York from October 22 to 24, 2010. In addition, the shortlist videos were on view throughout the fall of 2010 at kiosks at Guggenheim Museums in New York, Berlin, Bilbao, and Venice. The online component of the project, its YouTube channel, features all of the shortlist and top 25 videos, as well as highlights from the event in New York.

BMW Guggenheim Lab

The BMW Guggenheim Lab is an interdisciplinary mobile laboratory that will travel to nine cities over the course of six years. A collaboration between the BMW Group and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the Lab is part urban think tank, part community center, and part gathering space, and explores issues of urban life through public programming and discourse. Three different structures will house the Lab, each traveling to three cities. The first structure was designed by the Tokyo-based architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow. Seoul-based graphic designers Sulki & Min created the graphic identity for the project, including an interactive logo that will change over the course of the project.

The concept behind the Lab was developed by David van der Leer, Assistant Curator, Architecture and Urban Studies, and Maria Nicanor, Assistant Curator, Architecture, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The Lab’s Advisory Committee is composed of internationally renowned experts in a range of fields and nominates members for each city’s Lab Team, an interdisciplinary group that will help create the programming for that location. The Advisory Committee members for the first three-city cycle of the project are: Daniel Barenboim, Elizabeth Diller, Nicholas Humphrey, Muchadeyi Masunda, Enrique Peñalosa, Juliet Schor, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Wang Shi.

The Lab was open from August 3 to October 16, 2011 in New York City’s East Village and was attended by over 54,000 visitors from 60 countries. Members of the New York Lab Team were: Omar Freilla, founder and coordinator of Green Worker Cooperatives, Bronx, New York; Charles Montgomery, Canadian journalist and urban experimentalist; Olatunbosun Obayomi, Nigerian microbiologist and inventor; and architects and urbanists Elma van Boxel and Kristian Koreman, founders of Zones Urbaines Sensible (ZUS), Rotterdam.

The Lab will be open in Berlin from May 24 to July 29, 2012. Members of the Berlin Lab are: José Gómez-Márquez, program director for the Innovations in International Health Initiative (IIH) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); architect and engineer Carlo Ratti, who practices in Italy and directs the MIT Senseable City Lab; Berlin-based artist Corinne Rose, who works with photography and video and teaches at the Bern University of the Arts, Switzerland; and Rachel Smith, principal transport planner with AECOM, based in Brisbane. After Berlin, the Lab will travel to Mumbai in 2012-13.

Planned museums

Guggenheim Guadalajara

On July 8, 2006, Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, announced it signed an agreement with the Guggenheim Foundation to build a 30,000 m² (320,000 sq ft) "Guggenheim Abu Dhabi" museum. Frank Gehry designed the structure and completion was expected in 2011. The museum will be located on Saadiyat Island with a performing arts center, the Zayet National Museum and a branch of the Louvre.

In January 2011, the Guggenheim Foundation announced that the completion date was pushed back to 2013. It also announced that the city of Helsinki, Finland commissioned the foundation to study the feasibility of constructing a museum there.

In March 2011, over 130 artists announced a plan to boycott the Abu Dhabi museum citing abuses of foreign workers during construction. They noted arbitrary withholding of wages, unsafe working conditions and failure of companies to pay recruitment fees to laborers. The artists said they will refuse to sell works to the museum or participate in events.

Other museums have been projected for Guadalajara , Vilnius, the latter in association with the Hermitage Museum.

External links

• Guggenheim Museums websites
• BMW Guggenheim Lab
• YouTube Play
• Guggenheim YouTube Play
• [1] Helsinki Guggenheim feasability study