The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum hit it out of the park in 2009: attendance climbed to 1.3 million, far exceeding the record set in 2008 of 1.1 million. Credit a combination of great exhibits, lots of publicity, the building’s restoration and the museum’s 50th anniversary.

Now for a few details: In mid-year, the Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward, on view from May 15 – August 23, 2009, set a museum record with 409,117 visitors. It didn’t last long. The Kandinsky exhibition, on view from September 18 through this past January 13, attracted 522,015 visitors. (That was 55% above the same period in 2008.) People also bought: The Kandinsky catalogue sold out, with more than 11,000 flying off the shelves, which helped bump up projected retail sales estimates in the store and online by 21.05%. 

Both shows were expected to do well, but both surprised the museum by doing much better than projected, deputy director Eleanor Goldhar told me. “It was brilliant curatorial work, plus timing, plus luck,” she says. While expected attendance is always part of the conversation about exhibits, Goldhar says, “We can’t predict what will be a big hit; we are constantly surprised.”

(BTW, Goldhar notes that museum began keeping track of exhibition attendance only in 1992, but she is sure that no other previous exhibit exceeded these totals. Moreover, research shows that the building itself continues to be the museum’s biggest draw.)

The Anish Kapoor work (detail, left), still on view, is also doing well, and the new restaurant (which I wrote about here), is proving to be a draw, too. What’s more, membership increased.

Goldhar says she can’t really say how this year’s achievements will affect the director’s or curators’ minds. “Attendance used to be at about 1 million [a year]. Now we can aim higher, but it’s not about the numbers.”

No, it isn’t. But it surely was exciting to see people lined up to see paintings, not motorcycles.

Paris and the Avant-Garde, masterworks from the museum’s permanent collection, is on view now.

Photos: Courtesy Guggenheim Museum 

 

Depending on what the financial markets are doing, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim is either described as the richest, or the second richest, or sometimes the third richest man in the world. But he keeps a very low profile in the world of philanthropy and culture, though he has been loosening his wallet — currently estimated at close to $60 billion — in the last few years.

Now he’s about to give Mexico a new museum — by year-end. Ground was broken last year on the structure, whose cost has not been disclosed but is estimated at $34 million. The building, designed by Slim’s son-in-law Fernando Romero, an architect who apprenticed with Rem Koolhas, is located in an industrial area of Mexico City.

According to my former colleague Geri Smith, of Business Week,

Four years ago, Slim asked Romero to design a new building for the Soumaya collection, which had outgrown its 15-year-old home in a century-old converted paper factory in an older part of the city. “We wanted to translate his vision and his art collection and this historic moment when Mexico has become part of a more global economic network,” Romero says of Slim, whose business empire spans all of Latin America. His mobile telecom company–just one of his many businesses–has nearly 200 million clients.

Geri says Slim’s 66,000-item collection ranges from “15th century European masters to the second-largest private collection of sculptures by Auguste Rodin outside of France.”

She describes the 183,000 sq. ft. building as a “gleaming aluminum cube that has been stretched and twisted so that it soars 150 feet into the sky, its thrusting, curving upper contours reminiscent of the bow of a ship.”

Read more from her article here. Should be quite a structure — with galleries on five levels.

 

I interrupt this blog for a non-commercial, commercial message:

This Friday, the Partnership for the Homeless in New York is holding an art auction at Gagosian Gallery on W. 21st Street in Chelsea to benefit its Brooklyn-based Family Resource Center. The pitch calls it unprecedented — whether it is or not is immaterial; it’s a good cause. 

This “first-time” event was proposed by Richard Serra and his wife Clara (above) to the Partnership and they offered to chair it. Almost everything has been donated — the space, the auctioneering by Tobias Meyer of Sotheby’s, a performance by Jessye Norman from the American songbook, and art works from more than 70 artists. They include Richard Artschwager, John Baldessari, Matthew Barney, Louise Bourgeois, Cecily Brown, Chris Burden, Vija Clemins, Chuck Close, Mark di Suvero, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Jasper Johns, Joan Jonas, Ellsworth Kelly, Jeff Koons, Vik Muniz, Takashi Murakami, Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra, Kiki Smith, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Lawrence Weiner.

You can view their works here, and you can leave absentee bids for them. Or you can go to the event; tickets cost $175, and information about reserving tickets is on the same website as the art works.

The Family Resource Center, btw, helps homeless children keep up with their education and remain connected to their community and helps their parents deal with health, housing and other financial issues.

UPDATE, 2/3: The auction raised $2,075,000.

 

 

Are the visual arts coming to Broadway again? And what picture will be drawn? It’s not always “good” for art: Art was a winning play, more about friendship than painting, but it still reinforced some conventional antipathy toward art.

Now there’s word around New York that Red, a play by John Logan about Mark Rothko that opened on Dec. 8 at Donmar Warehouse in London, is likely to transfer to New York, probably this spring.

The play is set in 1958-59, and involves the commission Rothko won for a series of murals from the Four Seasons restaurant. The title stems from this quote: “There is only one thing I fear in life my friend… One day the black will swallow the red.”

Here’s what the Official London Theatre Guide says:

Under the watchful gaze of his young assistant and the threatening presence of a new generation of artists, Mark Rothko takes on his greatest challenge yet: to create a definitive work for an extraordinary setting. 

Red is a moving and compelling account of Rothko’s struggle to accept his growing riches and the praise heaped upon him, which became his ultimate undoing.

Alfred Molina plays Rothko in London, where the drama closes on Feb. 6. He would do it in New York, too.

London critics were mixed about the play. The Telegraph called it “second-rate.” The Independent liked it much better, saying it was “brilliantly acted,” and so did The Guardian.

But all agreed that the play gives theatre-goers a window on a great artist, deploying several bits of conventional wisdom. The set, Rothko’s studio on the Bowery, is a symbolic mess of splattered red paint, foreshadowing Rothko’s death. Rothko is cranky, somewhat abusive to the only other character, his assistant, who represents the younger generation of artists about to supplant Rothko’s generation.

That’s human nature. But the critics said the play goes on about art, too. I’m eager to hear exactly what…

Photo Credit: Johan Persson, Courtesy London Theatre Guide 

Let’s give credit to the Fine Arts Fund in Cincinnati. In the belief that funding for the arts — private and public — has hit a “plateau that has little to do with the current economy,” the group began a study of public attitudes toward the arts, trying to find out why people take little responsibility for financing them with public money.

The theory: if we change the message, maybe we can change their minds — but first we have to understand their minds. After a year of study, here are some of their findings:

• People view the arts as “entertainment,” and therefore “a matter of taste, not public responsibility” and as “an extra, not a necessity.”
• People expect to have “a mostly passive, consumer relationship with the arts.” The arts will be on offer, and they should succeed or fail in the marketplace, without the need for support.
• The arts are a low priority for most people, even when they value art.

To change all that, the group proses a new message that differentiates the arts from entertainment, stresses their public value, and includes all people in a region, not just city-dwellers. The message would center on the arts “ripple effect,” not simply the economic ripples (which, as I’ve said before, don’t stand up when compared with other economic investments) but the communal ripples. Among them is a “more connected population,” with diverse groups sharing experiences and learning new perspectives, and revitalized communitites that go “well beyond the limited dollar-and-cents economic argument.”

Is it enough? Is it correct? I think the approach has some merit. One thing I like about it is the idea that this problem requires new thinking, based on evidence, and that the report emphasizes that it recommends not a new slogan or image, but a new orientation toward communicating the value of the arts. How thoughtful.

You can read the 24-page report here.