Guggenheim Gains a Goya, Loses Its Spring Blockbuster

NOT Visiting the Guggenheim: Goya, "El Rey Fernando VII con Manto Real," Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid; Photo: All rights reserved © Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

The Guggenheim Museum, New York, squeezed a little extra publicity mileage out of its current Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso by convening a no-news press conference this morning to unveil Goya's stolen-and-recovered Childen with a Cart.

But it's been less eager to publicize the recent cancellation of its plan to be only American venue for another show involving the same Spanish master, Citizens and Kings: Portraiture in the Age of David and Goya, which it co-organized with the Réunion des Musées Nationaux and the Louvre in Paris, and the Royal Academy in London (where it is on view to Apr. 20).

A brief press release announcing this unfortunate development is posted on its website (go here and click on the Jan. 26 item). But this notice not been widely distributed (if my own non-receipt is any indication). Another venue is urgently being sought.

Betsy Ennis, the Guggenheim's public affairs officer, provided CultureGrrl with more details about the reason for the sudden cancellation of this major show of 145 works (in its London version), which was to open here in May:

This is due to unforeseen exterior restoration work including the replacement of lights, the reinforcement of the apron slab, and exterior concrete repair. This phase is expected to be completed in September 2007, but the restoration is an evolving process and is subject to change.

"Citizens and Kings" was to be installed on the ramps of the rotunda....[Instead], a staggered collection show, entitled "The Shapes of Space," has been planned for the spring and summer, which will give us the flexibility to respond to the requirements of the restoration. In other words, as restoration work is completed up the ramps, installations of works from the permanent collection will open.

What Ennis couldn't yet tell me was whether the loss of "Citizens and Kings" will likely cause a financial crunch for the Guggenheim, which presumably shared in the costs of organizing it, but now will lose the admissions and sales proceeds that such a blockbuster could be expected to generate.

The loss of this show is all the more unfortunate because it was to be a fitting memorial in his home city for the late Robert Rosenblum, the Guggenheim curator who assembled it along with his colleagues from the other two venues.

UPDATE: Regarding the press release announcing the show's cancellation, Betsy Ennis says: "It was distributed to press" on Jan. 26. If so, I did not receive it: I don't recall it, and it's not in my saved Guggenheim press e-mails. What's more, my search on "Guggenheim" on the NY Times website uncovers no mention of this significant loss of a hometown blockbuster.