Hasta La Ideas

by Anna Carnick

Opening today and capping off a year-long 50th anniversary celebration, the Guggenheim presents Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum. For this salon-style installation, the museum invited nearly 200 artists, designers and architects to submit their dream proposals for interacting with the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building’s central rotunda, or “void.” The central space, famously encompassed by the circular exhibit hallways, gave these world-renowned and up-and-coming and creatives plenty of space for interpretation, and the resulting exhibit features renderings of their visionary solutions.

Recurring themes include a return to nature, the relationship between light and space, aspirations of climbing the building, and the interplay of diaphanous elements with the concrete structure. The impressive list of contributors includes everyone from architects Zaha Hadid, Greg Lynn FORM, MVRDV and N55; to artists Anish Kapoor, Rachel Whiteread and Doris Salcedo and designers Fernando and Humberto Campana, Joris Laarman Studio, Studio Job and Dror Benshetrit.

Describing his contribution, “Redlining the Guggenheim,” a watercolor painting that depicts a red wall following the building’s circular path, Dror explains, “This was my first request from the Guggenheim, which for me is one of the most special museums in the world. As I am an artist by heart, I couldn’t imagine doing anything other than a hand-painted piece that communicates my vision to erect a wall that spirals in the middle of the climbing floor.”

Ultimately, these eclectic approaches to the space reinforce the potency of the Guggenheim’s organic architecture. Over the years, the building has inspired amazing site-specific installations and exhibition designs by the likes of Matthew Barney, Frank Gehry, Jenny Holzer and others. Considering these latest inventions, the inspirational nature of Wright’s 1959 building seems, if anything, to grow stronger with time.

A complementary exhibition website accompanies the show, documenting each submission and featuring introductory essays by Guggenheim curators Nancy Spector and David van der Leer.

Contemplating the Void runs through 28 April 2010.

Just how bad did the economic downfall hit museums? If you take the Metropolitan Museum of Art as your example, it should provide a good indication. BusinessWeek gives a quick rundown on the famous museum’s just-released 2008-2009 annual report, showing just how dramatic the financial cutoff was (a decline of about 24%, or $660 million). Here’s a bit:

The museum “never expected to find itself facing the unprecedented challenges that were brought on by the recent global financial crisis,” wrote President Emily K. Rafferty and Director Thomas P. Campbell, who took over in January 2009 from its longest-serving boss, Philippe de Montebello.

The operating deficit widened to $8.4 million from $1.9 million. Spokesman Harold Holzer said that was a record for the 140-year-old museum. Designated gifts by donors plunged by 46 percent to $43.1 million, according to the report.

And that’s on top of more visitors and more outreach using the internet. It’s no new news, but gives a good picture on how badly the much smaller museums (and most are smaller than the Met) must have suffered over this last year and a half (at least those that survived). What’s more, it doesn’t look like 2010 is going to be much of a walk in the park either, at least for New York museums like the Met, asArt Info reports on the predicted budget cuts headed their way soon.

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Back in mid-November, we told you that art lover/billionaire Eli Broad had returned to his plans to build a new museum for he and his wife’s massive modern art collection. He had already pitted two cities against one another, vying for the museum to be built on their turf, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, with another to be thrown in the mix soon. Now it’s come out that it’s Los Angeles itself who has chosen to enter the battle. The LA Times reports that the city has pushed the formerly-planned Grand Avenue Project area for Broad’s museum. Once designed by Frank Gehry, the spot was to be a mix of residential and shopping, but eventually got cancelled once the economy went south and the $1.8 billion price tag seemed impossibly high. Broad had even been a champion of the project until recently when he coincidentally “resigned from the committee in November in order to avoid any potential conflicts of interest as the negotiations move forward.” And now that LA has stepped forward, it’s all out war, with plays like Santa Monica offering “a $1 a year, 99-year lease on 2.5 acres of city-owned land next to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium” and new Los Angeleno Jeffrey Deitch, who will soon run one of Broad’s most donated-to institutions, has asked that the museum head toward Grand Avenue. So who will win? We should know sometime this spring.

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We’d like to think that we’re something of an educational stop on this vast information superwalkway, and the lesson we’d like you to take home with you this week is to wear non-slip shoes and pay attention to your surroundings, particularly if you’re visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Otherwise, you might follow the disastrous path that an un-named woman took recently when she tripped and landed on Picasso‘s ‘The Actor,’ tearing a chunk off the $130 million painting the museum has had since 1952 and is one of the most treasured works by the artist. Fortunately, the museum says it can fix it:

Immediately after the accident on Friday, the painting was taken to the Metropolitan’s conservation studio for repair. “Fortunately, the damage did not occur in a focal point of the composition, and the curatorial and conservation staffs fully expect that the repair, which will take place in the coming weeks, will be unobtrusive,” the museum said.

Despite the Mets’ “no big deal” attitude, the NY Times wonders just how exactly they will go about fixing the damage, as well as what it will do to the value of the painting. Meanwhile, the Times has a nice rundown of other recent art accidents, all tripping related.

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The Louvre is officially on a streak now, with the announcement that they have once again easily grabbed the title of world’s most popular museum, a title they’ve now held on to for the last few years. Despite concerns over their finances, the famous museum saw some 8.5 million visitors this year, which is the same as 2008, but certainly enough to put them well above the second place finisher, the British Museum, whose total came in just shy of 6 million. While we join the Smithsonian in guessing why they were so popular this year, we figure it probably has something to do with France’s decision to make their museums free for students and teachers, and maybe an extra few hundred thousand people stopped by because of their new McDonald’s. There was also these big pulls, as the Independent explains:

Temporary exhibitions attracted a large number of visitors, for instance, 250,000 people saw the Egyptian exhibition Les portes du Ciel (Heaven’s gates) and 400,000 people lined up for Titien, Tintoret, Veronese. Rivalites a Venise (Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivalry in Venice).

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