The Guggenheim regroups: The Story Behind the Cutbacks: in financial crisis, and with its downtown NYC expansion plan deferred or defunct, the Guggenheim museum continues to explore ambitious new global projects - Art & Money

Art in America, Feb, 2003 by Lee Rosebaum

The sole Guggenheim branch that predates Krens's tenure, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, is set on expansion: It intends to open new galleries this May, on property contiguous to its current headquarters on the Grand Canal--the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, Peggy Guggenheim's former home, which was donated to the Guggenheim Foundation in 1979. Plans announced more than three years ago to create a Guggenheim Museum Venice of Contemporary Art at the Punta della Dogana, a 17th-century former customs house, are on hold. The Peggy Guggenheim also has plans under way to organize exhibitions in Lugano, Modena, Palermo and Udine based on the collections of the Guggenheim Foundation.

Coping in New York

Back at home base, the byword is not expansion but contraction. Attendance in Manhattan has fallen 20 percent since 9/11 and the staff has been reduced by 43 percent. The museum has shortened its weekly schedule by 9 1/4 hours and cut the number of exhibitions presented there. Financial exigencies recently caused the museum to focus on "the extraordinary accomplishments of the permanent collection," said Krens, alluding to "Moving Pictures," the well-received recent presentation of the museum's own contemporary photographs, film and video. "In the beginning, I was a little skeptical about whether a permanent-collection-based contemporary multimedia show would work," he admitted. "I learned that there is an audience for that kind of work. It's basically a younger crowd," said the 56-year-old director.

New York exhibitions for 2003 are fewer in number than in prior years, and all had to be substantially funded before getting a place on the schedule. One eagerly anticipated show slated to open this month, postponed from last year, is "Matthew Barney: The Cremaster Cycle" [Feb. 21-June 11]. Last year the Guggenheim was supposed to have been the inaugural venue for Barney but--partly due to the lengthy extension caused by the 9/11 disruptions of the museum's "Brazil: Body & Soul"--New York is now the third stop, after Cologne and Paris. "At first Matthew was not happy about it," Krens acknowledged, "but, as it turns out, I think he adjusted and profited from the idea, because he had more time to plan the New York installation."

Another postponed show to open in New York later this year, after a stint at the Deutsche Guggenheim, is "Kasimir Malevich: Suprematism" [May 22-Sept. 7]. On view now [to May 4] are a film installation and a sculptural installation by French artist Pierre Huyghe, winner of the museum's 2002 Hugo Boss Prize. A much-anticipated James Rosenquist show now has firm dates as well [Oct. 23, 2003-Jan. 18, 2004]. Rescheduled from this year to next is an exploration of the pivotal role that Italian Futurism played in modernism, "Boccioni's Materia: A Futurist Masterpiece and the Parisian Avant-Garde" [Feb. 6-May 9, 2004].

Recouping in Rio?

A seeming throwback to the Guggenheim's ebullient, expansionist past, the buoyantly imaginative Brazilian project could be quashed or curtailed by recent negative developments not only in New York but also in Rio. Possibly imperiling the Brazilian project is that country's shaky economy. Its currency, the real, lost about one-third of its value against the dollar during 2002, and inflation was in double digits. Part of what the Wall Street Journal called a "market panic" in Brazil was caused by the election in October of the country's first avowedly left-wing president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. According to Vidarte, the museum project cannot proceed until all sides feel confident that government and private sources in Brazil can fund not only the construction but also both an annual operating budget of about $25 million and an acquisitions budget. The projected government subsidy is about 40 to 50 percent of the annual budget, Vidarte said.