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

Although resigned to curtailing his own wish list for now, Krens still credits his brashly enterprising approach with having given the Guggenheim a higher profile in the museum world. "The strategy was to build our programming strength, our collection and our international presence, so that those ideas would be the drivers for the institution," he said. "I think we did a lot of that.... But you have to learn from your experience and, right now, we are committed to an absolutely efficient operation."

Krens has indeed raised the Guggenheim Museum's profile worldwide. Whether he will now lower his grandiose expectations and constrain his expansionist impulses to adapt to hard times remains to be seen.

Lee Rosenbaum is a contributing editor of Art in America and writes frequently on the arts for a wide variety of publications.