Although the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum exhibited works of great artists, its contract with hotel resort the Venetian in Las Vegas won’t be renewed. (Photo: Las Vegas Sun)

The Las Vegas Sun reports on the announcement by Guggenheim officials that the museum foundation will close down its Guggenheim Hermitage branch in the Venetian, a large scale hotel and casino in the world’s gambling capital Las Vegas. The Guggenheim opened two Las Vegas museums, designed by Rem Koolhaas, in October 2001. The Guggenheim Hermitage, a partnership between the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, was the smaller of the two.

The museum’s official statement emphasizes the predetermined life-span of seven year for the project, and that number has been reached. Critics argue that the museum simply failed in terms of visitor numbers and commercial successes and therefore had to be closed. They blaim it on a combination of uninspiring, second-rate exhibitions, and the the fact that the nonprofit museum was housed in the for-profit hotel-casino which made it difficult to raise extra money within the local (business) community.

The Guggenheim’s (overseas) expansion plans have been hit hard in recent years. The Bilbao museum changed the face of museums, but grand plans to create a brand as distinctive as Coca-Cola - to put a Guggenheim everywhere from Mexico to Taiwan - proved too ambitious. The 63,700-square-foot Guggenheim Las Vegas closed its doors 15 months after its opening in 2001 because of lack of funds and low attendance. Its only show was “The Art of the Motorcycle.” Back in 2005 the British newspaper the Guardian already reported on the epic rise and (predicted) fall of the Guggenheim empire and its flamboyant director under the telling title ‘Is this the end of the Guggenheim dream?’. Notwithstanding all the troubles the Guggenheim is experiencing, plans for a large museum project in Abu Dhabi will be pressed forward as Thomas Krenz vividly described in a recent interview.

Related posts:  Have branch museums “run their course”?  //  Luxury hotels, condos, golf courses and… museums  //  Hermitage and Kremlin look to the Gulf  //  New Branch for Guggenheim Bilbao in… Bilbao  //  Human Rights Watch vs. Guggenheim  //

This entry was posted on vrijdag, april 11th, 2008 at 11:29 am and is filed under Architecture, Art, Entertainment, Tourism, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.