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.

A computer simulation of Saadiyat island in Abu Dhabi, where a new Guggenheim outpost will be part of a “cultural district.” (Photo: DPA/Spiegel Online)

In a recent SPIEGEL interview, the departing director of the New York- based Guggenheim Foundation, Thomas Krenz, talks frankly about the Guggenheim’s future outpost in Abu Dhabi. Calling it the “first museum for global contemporary art” and “a truly new step in the evolution of the art museum”, he even uses the term ‘pharaonic’ to describe the vast scale of the project. The exuberant design by Frank Gehry will occupy almost 42.000 square meters and will get a $781 million budget to acquire contemporary works of art.

After telling that the Guggenheim Foundation cannot afford the convenience, the luxury, of simply copying something we already have, he cofesses that by asking Frank Gehry once more to duplicate the ‘Bilbao-effect’, the museum could get into troubles: “It’s as if you, as a director, were shooting the action film ‘Die Hard’ and then ‘Die Hard II’. By the second or third time around, it becomes more difficult to surprise people.”

However, according to Krens the project is too important for Abu Dhabi, and for the Guggenheim Foundation to fail. He defends himself against the insinuations by the SPIEGEL journalist that the museum will merely become a tourist-hub and will be just another McGuggenheim-outlet by telling that he asked Frank Gehry to design a truly unique building with the breathtaking effect of the first cathedrals in medieval times. It remains to be seen whether this analogy will work in a Middle Eastern country.

Read the entire interview (Spiegel Online, March 27, 2008)
Read the latest news on the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi

On Saturday, huge cranes will begin lifting ancient statues, carvings and architectural fragments off the Acropolis, down to a new museum built at the base of the most famous citadel in the world. For the vast majority of these stone remnants of the great age of Athens, it will be the first time they have ever left this rocky summit.Even as the forces of history washed over this city for millennia, making and unmaking it according to the dictates of three major religions and at least a half-dozen empires, these stone gods and heroes, which once decorated its temples and public spaces, have remained close to their original home. That makes them the lucky ones.

The new museum, designed by architect Bernard Tschumi, has proved controversial from the start. The old Acropolis museum, a low and ugly space built next to the Parthenon, has long been deemed inadequate. Three earlier efforts to build a new museum, in 1976, 1979 and 1989, failed after becoming mired in legal, archaeological and political conflicts. The current museum, which required the expropriation of 25 buildings, has been in the works since 1997, and again legal difficulties delayed it — so much so that the plan to open in time for the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics is now ancient history.

But Dimitrios Pandermalis, the president of the museum project, says the first visitors will be allowed in early next year, and the museum will have a grand opening sometime in early 2009. At which point, perhaps, arguments about the building will give way to the building’s basic argument. Which is simple: Greece wants the marble sculptures that the English ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Lord Elgin, chiseled off the Parthenon more than 200 years ago. From the ground up, the building is designed to emphasize the Greek claim that the “Elgin marbles” should be returned to Athens, to join together in one place as much of the surviving Parthenon statuary as can be assembled.

Read full article (Washington Post, October 7, 2007)

The Klein Matterhorn (photograph: Johanna Huber)

If Heidi were alive today, the likelihood is she would no longer be skipping in the mountains with grandpa’s goats, but taking a lift to a cabin-pressurised viewing tower and conference centre in the Alps.

The once untouchable Alps are being turned into a huge and haughty playground for the rich, featuring luxury tower blocks, pyramids, and revolving hotels, as Switzerland’s cantons seek to produce ever bigger and better tourist attractions in a bid to outdo each other.

The latest project involves “stocking up” the Klein Matterhorn. Already home to the highest cable car in Europe, the smaller neighbour to the Matterhorn is soon to be topped with a 117 metre steel and glass pyramid which will take it to a height of 4,000 metres.

A so-called “four-thousander” is considered by alpinists to be the magic height for a mountain - because it marks a level most mere mortals will never reach. There are currently 76 of them in the Alps. Klein Matterhorn is set to become the 77th and tourist chiefs hope it will lure the visitors attracted by the hitherto distant prospect of conquering a four-thousander - albeit a manmade one.

Read full article (Guardian, September 20, 2007)

The Guggenheim Bilbao (photo: Denis Doyle for the New York Times)

A light patter bounced off the titanium fish scales of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao as a tour bus pulled up beside “Puppy,” Jeff Koons’s 43-foot-tall topiary terrier made of freshly potted pansies. A stream of tourists fanned out across the crisp limestone plaza, tripping over each other as they rushed to capture the moment on camera. After the frisson of excitement dimmed, they made their way down a gently sloping stairway and into the belly of the museum, paying 10.50 euros to see the work of an artist that most had never heard of.

It was a ritual that repeated itself several times an hour, like a well-run multiplex. And if Anselm Kiefer, the controversial post-war German artist, was eclipsed by the metallic blob that held a retrospective of his work, consider how Bilbao, a rusty port city on the northern coast of Spain, stacked up to the very museum that put it on the cultural map.

“We don’t know anything about Bilbao besides the Guggenheim,” said Luigi Fattore, 28, a financial analyst from Paris, who was taking pictures of his girlfriend under the puppy. As if to underscore the point, they showed up at the museum’s doorstep with their suitcase in tow. “We’ve arrived half an hour ago,” he said, “and went straight to the Guggenheim. Aside from the museum, we don’t have any plans.”

Read full article (New York Times, September 23, 2007)

The Brazilian port city of Santos will build a museum to honor its best-known treasure: Pele.

Santos Mayor Joao Paulo Tavares Papa said the 16 million real (US$8 million, €6.6 million) museum would spearhead the renovation of the city’s historic district, presently in ruins.

Papa announced the project on Thursday with Pele and Sao Paulo state Governor Jose Serra.

“We are joining the desire of Pele with the disposition of the governor and the recovery of our heritage. These are long-standing dreams,” Papa said on the city’s Web site.

Pele, 66, leaped when Papa made the announcement and punched the air, his trademark commemoration after scoring a goal.

“This project will attract tourism and promote the country, that deserves this gift,” he said. “I feel proud.”

Read full article (International Herald Tribune, August 24, 2007)

The plan to add a huge new modernist portico to Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, the most controversial building project of recent times in Italy, is to go ahead.

After nine years of bitter argument and despite the rage of Florentines including the opera and film director Franco Zeffirelli, the dramatic and imposing new portico at the side of Italy’s most famous art museum was given approval this week by the city’s super-intendent of architectonic goods, Paola Grifoni.

Its designer is Arata Isozaki, the celebrated avant garde architect from Kyushu in Japan whose other works in Italy include the ice hockey stadium for Turin’s 2006 Winter Olympics. In 1998 he won the competition to design the museum’s new exit against top foreign practices, including Britain’s Norman Foster and Hans Hollein of Austria.

His solution was simple, bold and arresting: a huge cantilevered canopy fanning out from the gallery, supported by slim rectangular pilasters. There was no attempt to integrate the new work with the Renaissance original: the contrast between old and modern was deliberately stark.

Read full article (The Independent, August 10, 2007)

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To replicate the success of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA) hired the California design group Gensler, as well as the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and lined up the Louvre in Paris. Then they approached Thomas Krens, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Krens was not impressed with the Gensler master plan, but he ultimately decided to help Abu Dhabi expand its ambitions. Krens spoke with Newsweek about the plans for a cultural district, which will include a modern and contemporary art museum, a classic art museum, a national museum, a maritime museum, a performing arts center and a biennale pavilion.

Read full article (Newsweek International, August 6, 2007)

The bullet-scarred Old Airport in the city of Entebbe, Uganda, will be turned into an aviation museum. In 1976, an Air France plane was hijacked by sympathisers to the Palestinian cause and landed at Entebbe, with the blessing of President Idi Amin. The hijackers demanded the release of all Palestinian political prisoners in exchange for the, mostly Jewish, passengers.

In one of the most dramatic rescue operations, Israeli commandos under the cover of darkness, flew into Entebbe, rescued the 100 passengers and flew out before the Ugandan army could mount a credible defence.

The raid on Entebbe was pictured in many movies, including the most recent Oscar-winning film, ‘The Last King of Scotland’. So apparently, now is the right time to capitalise on the history surrounding the building by turning it into a kind of aviation museum, with the raid on Entebbe as the main attraction.

Read arcticle (New Vision (Kampala, 17 July 2007)

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Throughout the world a growing number of historic inner cities is sealed off from everyday live as they are turned into open-air museums where buildings become part of the permanent collection and people are treated as visitors. The heritage value of cityscapes, the need for their conservation, an increasing dependency on the tourist industry and the loss of traditional sources of income force many of them to isolate, conserve and package their built heritage for mass consumption. Especially in Europe, the old continent, numerous cities are being fixed in time. Economic forces are slowly colonizing the social habitat, from Lisbon to Stockholm and from Krakow to Bath. These cities are neither booming nor shrinking, but are simply in a state of paralysis and try to turn their inertia into a unique selling point.

Today I visited the so-called Old Town in Warsaw. While crossing the main square and walking down crowded backstreets I had a first hand experience of the ’scripting’ of cities or what some critics tend to call ‘the museumization of public space’. Apart from the many characteristic facades I found myself surrounded by a plethora of commemorative plaques, monuments and other reminders of the tragic events that occured in this city more than sixty years ago. During World War II, after the courageous uprising of the besieged citizens, almost 80 percent of Warsaw was completely destroyed by the occupying forces of that time. But right after the war Poland’s capital arose from the ashes and many of the historic streets, buildings, and churches were restored to their original form. In 1980, Warsaw’s historic Old Town (that is, the copy of the original) was even added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list. This is highly remarkeable for a historic urban centre which is in fact only six decades old. And this youthfulness doesn’t bother tourists either, as the thousands of visitors per day clearly show.

The people of Warsaw can only be admired for the determination and will-power that was needed to rebuild an entire city and one can easily understand the fact that they converted almost every house into a shrine and gradually turned their city into an open air museum. However, after spending an afternoon amidst the numerous monuments and reconstructed buildings in this cobblestoned city I was once again reminded of Marshall McLuhan (”the message is the medium”) who predicted that ‘the city no longer (will) exists, except as a cultural ghost for tourists’.

Go to official website of the City of Warsaw
Go to UNESCO’s World Heritage List