The Guggenheim
Hermitage Museum is a museum in The Venetian, one of
the world's largest hotels, in
Las Vegas, Nevada.
It opened in
October 2001, and has added three more collections
and exhibits since then. It was a collaboration
agreement between the State Hermitage Museum in St.
Petersburg Russia, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Foundation.
The first Guggenheim museum, opened in 1939, was
called the "Museum of Non-Objective Painting", and
resided at an automobile showroom at East 54th St.,
in midtown Manhattan. Within a few years work began
on the design of a new permanent home for the
collection. The architect, Frank Lloyd Wright,
conceived the space as a "temple of spirit" which
would facilitate a new way of looking at the modern
pieces in the collection. Named the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum after its founder, the landmark
building opened in 1959 to large crowds and critical
controversy.
Guggenheim's niece, Peggy, donated her art
collection and home in Venice, the Palazzo Venier
dei Leoni, to the foundation in the mid-1970s. At
her death in 1979 the collection was opened to the
public.
In 1992, during renovations and expansion of the
Frank Lloyd Wright building, the Guggenheim opened a
small Guggenheim Museum SoHo in SoHo. This space
remained open even after the main museum was re-opened,
but closed in 2002 during a period of scaling-back
the foundation's rapid expansion of museum space
around the world.
The rapid expansion, led by director Thomas Krens
produced several new museums, most notably the
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao which was opened in 1997.
This major new Guggenheim, designed by Frank Gehry
is a central piece in the planned revitalization of
the Basque city of Bilbao, Spain. The Basque
government funded the construction while the
foundation purchased the artworks and manages the
facility. The museum has been hailed as one of the
most significant cultural buildings completed in the
20th century and a worthy successor to the tradition
of design innovation and excellence started by
Wright's 1959 Guggenheim in New York.
Also in 1997 a small gallery in the Unter den
Linden area of Berlin, Germany was opened as the
Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin in cooperation with the
Deutsche Bank. In 2001 a new museum in Las Vegas,
Nevada was built to showcase highlights of the
Guggenheim collection and the collection of the
Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The
Sackler Center for Arts Education was also opened in
2001 on the campus of the original New York
building.
There also are plans for another, much larger
Guggenheim museum on the waterfront in downtown
Manhattan. Frank Gehry was hired once more as the
architect, and his essentially complete designs for
the building were showcased in 2001 at the Solomon
R. Guggenheim. These plans were disrupted, however,
by at least two distinct factors. First, the museum
experienced financial problems in the economic
downturn of the early 2000s. Second, the September
11, 2001 attacks prompted reconsideration of any
construction plans in downtown Manhattan. As of
2002, it is therefore unclear whether the waterfront
Guggenheim in New York will ever be built. Another
project, for a location in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,
to be designed by French architect Jean Nouvel is
also being considered.
On January 19, 2005, philanthropist Peter B.
Lewis resigned from his position as chairman of the
foundation, expressing his opposition to Krens's
continuing moves to expand the Guggenheim globally.
He said that he wished the foundation would
"concentrate more on New York and less on being
scattered all over the world." Lewis had been the
largest donor in the history of the Guggenheim, and
it is not yet clear what effect his resignation will
have on their future plans.
Not all of Krens's plans for additional
Guggenheims have borne fruit. These projects have
failed or are in trouble:
Taiwan: Archictect: Zaha Hadid. Reason for
failure: the local government of Taichung couldn't
raise the money.
Rio de Janeiro: Architect: Jean Nouvel. Project
abandoned in 2005.
Guadalajara, Mexico: Architect: Enrique Norten.
Status (as of July 2006): still struggling to raise
funds.
The Guggenheim Foundation is discussing with the
Pompidou Center in Paris a project to build a museum
in Hong Kong.
