ARTnews on Armstrong-ing the Guggenheim

November ARTnews

How will the Global Guggenheim change under the directorship of Richard Armstrong, who replaces Tom Krens as director on Nov. 4?

According to executive editor Robin Cembalest's piece for the November issue of ARTnews (now online):

The vision now is of a kinder, gentler globalism, focused not so much on building multimillion-dollar megastructures by starchitects as on forging alliances.

But unlike Philippe de Montebello, who recently told me that he intended to keep hands off the Metropolitan Museum when he leaves its directorship at the end of this year, Tom Krens intends to stay very much in the picture: As a consultant to the Guggenheim Foundation, he'll be managing the development of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. Board president Jennifer Blei Stockman told Robin that Krens "has created his own business as well. We are one of his company's clients."

Are there any other cases of a museum's becoming a "client" of its former director? Is the man who created a new model for fundraising through "feasibility studies" for Guggenheim-branded outposts (which mostly proved infeasible) now engineering a new model for raising funds for ex-museum directors?

Cembalest confirmed what CultureGrrl reported last month: The Guggenheim Vilnius is not going to happen any time soon, if at all, because "the agreement with the Guggenheim Bilbao stipulates that the foundation must consult with it before initiating new museum projects in Europe." Juan Ignacio Vidarte, Bilbao's director, last month indicated to me that he was not favorably disposed towards the proposed new European outpost. Presumably they knew all that BEFORE deciding to string along the eager Lithuanians with a feasibility study.

The new director may feel uncomfortable or even constrained by his predecessor's looking over his shoulder. And Krens' continued role could defeat the board's wish, as expressed to Cembalest by Stockman, for the deep-pocketed but disaffected Peter Lewis to return to the fold. We can only hope that Armstrong isn't strong-armed, but gets a clear shot at redefining and stabilizing an institution which, on Krens' watch, had a tumultuous, controversial ride.

The clearest expression of Armstrong's vision for change at the Guggenheim was his comment to Cembalest that he is "interested in serving artists as the first constituency. That's the challenge: ...to have artists partaking of what's shown in the Guggenheim, ingesting it, and having it inform their own work."

Does this mean that the former Whitney curator is hoping to Whitnefy the Guggenheim? Anything that shifts the focus from empire building to artistic ferment is a good thing.

Not available online is Ann Landi's "I Expect to Be Surprised Every Day," a profile of the Met's new director, Tom Campbell---also coming in the November ARTnews.