building as a collectible
In 1939 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation opened its first gallery space—the Museum of Non-Objective Painting—in a former Manhattan automobile showroom on East 54th Street.
Seventy-five years later, the Guggenheim Foundation operates museums in New York, Venice, Bilbao, and soon, Abu Dhabi. Until relatively recently, additional Guggenheims could be found in Berlin, Las Vegas, and downtown New York. Designed by some of the world’s most prominent architects, these museums have often been distinguished as much by their architecture as by the art displayed within. They have also sparked debates ranging from the intrusiveness of architecture in an art museum to the ability of a single building to transform an entire city.
The Guggenheim has transcended the conventional art museum to simultaneously become art collection, international constellation of architectural icons, and brand. And with the open design competition for the proposed Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki currently underway, the Guggenheim’s particularly powerful expansion-minded vigor shows no signs of diminishing.
CLOG : GUGGENHEIM will critically examine the past, present, and future architectural impact of this global institution.
Guggenheim v MOMA #
Cultural institutions for matter of their existence frame a parlance to how a society where they operate in, consume their due dosage. They resort to varying mechanisms but are dictated by mandates felt necessary by powers that make things be. It’s clichéd to consider these institution types are objects of societal excess but of significance, is being to a degree an integral aspect to an economy its part of. ‘Incorporation’, when they reach a status inculcate in itself an operational tactic required to sustain as such. These moralities of behavior are aspects enforced to be dealt with. Dealt with, is almost equivalent to having to accept their inconsistencies if they are identified as such. Future therefore is to either acknowledge these quirks and make peace or try otherwise. Should there be a restrictive size and collection limit imposed to be held by a cultural brand? Will this act restrict the concerns prerogative with scale? Can it be a [cultural] precinct instead of an institution? Collective instead of Corporation.
Glenn D. Lowry defending MOMA’s decision to the demolish the American Folk Art Museum as part of its expansion plans in a public forum held at the New York Society for Ethical Culture on 28th January 2014.
Job posting on the Guggenheim’ website for Curator for Urban Studies and Digital Initiatives: document dated 4th February 2014.
Collectives are tricky. Should Guggenheim as corporation of collectives be collecting buildings? Or can it be more like its counterpart and just focus on art as object instead of giving any undue credit, fuss its container? Reaction to the open design competition for the proposed Guggenheim Helsinki mutes, maybe to a certain extent complaints on a viable position to argue adequately how art should be displayed. This stance to present a future on the operation of the corporation to keep its acts in place, rests in models of cultural asset creation and management. When related to politics of a region, architecture is just another tool in the mandate to promote an institutional agenda. Be it a generative wooden “typically finnish” blob/ box or cruise ships in cyclic oscillation a new model instead of an effect is the outcome which is Guggenheim Next. This shouldn’t be formula just an iteration to consider. Culture isn’t limited to the engine producing it or located as an ideal between its operational methods. Picking a side however amicable one is over the other for a certain set of biased attitudes is essentially a dissuasive state with respect to culture.
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