The Guggenheim Museums:
Case Study in Contemporary Museum Issues

The Wright-designed, NY Guggenheim

The first works that defined the collection were from non-objective painters like Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Piet Mondrian. The collection greatly expanded in the 1970s when Peggy Guggenheim, a niece of Solomon and a famous art collector and dealer, donated her art collection then housed in her Venetian home, the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal in Venice (see the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice site, now part of the Guggenheim Foundation). In the 1990s, the Guggenheim expanded into something like an empire, opening new museums in SoHo (New York, 1992), Bilbao (Spain, 1997), Berlin (1997), Las Vegas (2001). In 2002-2003, the financial strains of the expansion caused cutbacks in NY and Las Vegas.

The stages of the Guggenheim's growth and expansion since the late 1980s are a window onto artworld and museum economics and politics. The expansion was funded by overlapping sources of money: from the private and corporate sectors (donors and sponsorships) and from nonprofit and public sources (foundation and public arts money). The expansion, overseen and promoted by Thomas Krens, the museum director since 1988, included large, expensive, "blockbuster" art shows, and Krens' business approach has generated controversy and criticism from many sides of the artworld and museum constituents.

The following readings are sources for building a case study on current museum issues using the recent history and current state of the Guggenheim as an example. These articles are to be read in the context of the prior readings on the social, political, and economic conditions of art museums today.

• Museum website and history of the N.Y. Guggenheim
• History of Guggenheim, Bilbao
  • Photographs of the Gehry-designed Bilbao Museum
  • Artnet photos of show at Gugg-Bilbao, 2000.
• Descriptions and press releases on "The Global Guggenheim" exhibition in 2001: Museum description || Press Release
• Evdoxia Baniotopoulou, "Art for Whose Sake? Modern Art Museums and Their Role in Transforming Societies: The Case of the Guggenheim Bilbao," Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies, November 2001.
  
  
• "When Merchants Enter the Temple," Economist, 3/19/2001. [On the new business model of the museum.]
• Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, "Viva Las Vegas!" Artnet, 10/11/01. [On the Guggenheim, Las Vegas]
• Herbert Muschamp, "When Art Puts Down a Bet in a House of Games," NYT, 4/12/02. [Review of Guggenheim Las Vegas.]
• Jerry Saltz, GuggEnron, Artnet, 2/13/02.
• Deborah Solomon, "Is the Go-Go Guggenheim Going, Going . . .," New York Times, Magazine, 6/30/2002. [Major look at the state of the Guggenheim, in the NYT Magazine.]
  
  
• Michael Kimmelman, "An Era Ends for the Guggenheim," NYT, 12/6/02. [Budget crunch and board director's ultimatum for Krens.]
• Christine Bohlen, "Chairman Gives the Guggenheim an Ultimatum, Then $12 Million," NYT, 12/4/02.
• Christine Bohlen, "Retrenching Guggenheim Closes Hall in Las Vegas," NYT, 12/24/02.
• David W. Dunlap, "Guggenheim Drops Plans for East River Museum," NYT, 12/31/02.
  
  
• Kelly Devine Thomas, "The Guggenheim Downsizes," ARTnews, February 2003. ["After years of expansion, Guggenheim director Thomas Krens has slashed spending, staff, and programming—under pressure from board chair Peter Lewis to balance the budget or leave the museum ."]