The Glocal Guggenheim: Richard Armstrong’s Plans for New York

Richard Armstrong, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

"I have this private fantasy that the museum casts itself northwards," Richard Armstrong told me during our recent hour-long conversation in the director's office on the 8th floor of the Guggenheim Museum, which he has occupied for the last three months.

Northwards? I immediately began seeing visions of the Guggenheim Saskatchewan.

But he actually had something very unKrensian in mind:

There's a big constituency north of here that may not have a neighborhood museum. Why couldn't we become more of that for them, up in Harlem? [Well, they DO have some museums uptown already, but more is more.]

Now that tourism is going to shrink back somewhat, one of the challenges is that we've got to make certain that people in New York feel that this is a place they want to come to over and over again. You want people to say, "I'll go because I know when I go there that I'll be treated well, I'll be stimulated and I'll be comforted.

How would he accomplish this, I wondered. The first part of the answer was a bit of a letdown, but then things got more interesting:

The public aspects of the place will be changed somewhat. We'll have a different coffee service [??!], for example. The restaurant is going to have a different character.

For our Frank Lloyd Wright show, the interior of the institution is going to go back to the way it was in 1959, which incorporated indoor/outdoor. The garden aspects of the museum are going to be restored: There are places where there were meant to be plants.

There are meant to be plants behind the fountain pool, at the top of the first ramp. We're going to put it back for the show in May and see how it functions into the future. It will soften the interior and make the place seem a little more hospitable. It's kind of a hard-surface place right now. I'm also hoping we can get better and more comfortable seating.

As for exhibitions:

I'm interested that our shows into the future have historical scope and focus at the same time. We need to put our intellectual imprimatur onto ideas and eras.

The one thing I can say to you that's concrete is that I'm very keen on seeing a show that uses the Panza Collection as its ballast but considers the whole Minimalist impulse. I'd like to make that a full-immersion exhibition, so that it's not just confined to this building but seen elsewhere---in the city and maybe in the region.

I think one of the powers the city could have is by linking up intellectually. By coincidence, when we have our Kandinsky show, the Modern will have its Bauhaus exhibition and the Sabarsky collection will be presented at the Neue Galerie. So we've begun chatting about how we say to inquisitive people, "Be certain to see all the aspects of this impulse and go around and take advantage of the big sampler of New York"....

I'm struck with how collegial the whole [art museum] directorial level [in New York] is right now. We just had lunch again at the Frick to celebrate Tom Campbell [the new director at the Metropolitan Museum]. This is the second time I've been to lunch with these guys and ladies in just two or three months. My impression is that these people are closely linked.

I've long believed that New York museums were counterproductively competitive and needed to cooperate more. But there's a new generation of leadership afoot, and these are challenging times in which peaceful coexistence, instead of an arts arms race, seems all the more appealing. If Armstrong can help foster a collaborative atmosphere, the cultural life of the city will be greatly enhanced.

The new director of the Guggenheim, true to his Whitney roots, feels strongly that a contemporary art museum's "first constituency is always living artists." And he's not much concerned about perceived conflicts-of-interest involving trustees (and here), sponsors and donors who have personal stakes in the shows that they support:

As long as you've got capitalism, you've got capitalists. And as long as they're not doing anything illegal, to me it seems inevitable and proper that people who feel strongly about "blue" are going to support "blue" projects....I think if people are partisan towards certain artists or some sort of aesthetic movement, it's unrealistic to say you're forbidden to underwrite that project. It just doesn't make sense to me.

As for coming up with more specific ideas about programs and projects, Armstrong took a raincheck:

I have to take advice from people who are here and get to know each one of them. So I need a little more time.