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| Visions & Revisions |
Growing the Guggenheim
12/01/2005
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My mother left me a Remington—which, of course, is traditional
representational art—and my kids each take it for six months. My mother had very
conservative tastes and was never passionate about nonobjective art. Frankly,
she wasn’t passionate about the baroness, either.
Your generation was the one that took the risk of extending the Guggenheim
reach to other regions, including Bilbao in Spain.
Actually, the globalization of the Guggenheim was not a risk for us at all.
In Bilbao, as in Berlin, we became partners with a city or organization and they
put up the money. The great success of Bilbao is due in large part to our choice
of Frank Gehry as architect. The building itself is a tremendous attraction. But
when the Basque government first approached us, Tom Krens, our director, said
that he knew nothing about the Basque region except jai alai and the separatist
terrorists. So he and I decided to make an impossible demand, which would serve
as a polite “thanks, but no thanks.” We asked for $20 million for our endowment,
$100 million to build the building and $50 million to acquire art. We also
wanted a guarantee of no operating loss. They said they’d think about it and
surprised us by agreeing to our terms about a week later.
Today we’re looked
upon as visionaries because of Bilbao’s success. But the real credit goes to the
Basque government: they took the risk of spending taxpayers’ money on a museum
they hoped would attract visitors to an old industrial town. It was their
vision, not ours, and I hate to see us get the credit for it.
But I try to be
careful with expansion. Around 9/11, we were considering a huge, new Frank
Gehry–designed museum down on the East River in lower Manhattan. Quite candidly,
I was never in favor of it. With an endowment that I considered inadequate, the
idea of spending $900 million on another museum in New York never appealed to
me. But I didn’t assert my doubts because Peter Lewis, our chairman, was willing
to put up $250 million personally, and I didn’t want to discourage his interest
in the Guggenheim. 9/11 pretty much killed the idea, and I think most of the
board was relieved.
You wrote about recruiting board members as a means of building the
endowment. Your roster looks like a powerhouse of corporate America.
Nowadays, unfortunately, an overwhelming majority of trustees have to be
people of wealth because who else is going to step up to the plate with the
necessary money? We require a minimum $100,000 annual fee to be a trustee at the
Guggenheim; that eliminates many wonderful people. Additionally, each person on
the board is expected to give $2 million to $2.5 million in a capital gift. We
do, of course, have some art-oriented people on the board, who we value ever so
highly because of their knowledge and reputation—but only a handful.
We’re
not alone. Look at the Museum of Modern Art’s recent expansion. They raised an
unbelievable amount of money through their board members, one of whom is Mr.
(David) Rockefeller. That helped.
Where do you see the Guggenheim 50 years from now?
I’d like to think that our collection would be known worldwide, and that we
would be organizing exhibitions for our satellite museums. And I hope we limit
expansion of those satellites. We’re currently in New York, Berlin, Venice,
Bilbao and Las Vegas. We may add one in South America and one in the Far
East.
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