Krens' big-top approach to culture also embodies a recessive American tendency toward empire, or what we cutely call McDonaldization. In an attempt to juice up, globalize, and glamorize the museum, to market it, turn it into a worldwide entertainment network, boost audience share, stage spectaculars and pad the pockets of this institution, Krens hoped to transform the Guggenheim into a brand. Jerry Saltz, The Village Voice.
Unlike anyone else, he has articulated a vision of the art museum in the 21st century that transcends the old parochial model and suits a world of shrinking distances. Michael Kimmelman, The New York Times.
The nature of the art museum and museum practice is changing. Increasing demands from the museum visitor, growing competition, not only amongst museums, but also from more general entertainment offerings and tightening pressure from funding sources, both public and private, have forced museum directors to re-assess how they do business. Relationships are changing and developing between the museum and business sectors and complex issues relating to sponsorship arrangements, commercialisation, curatorial practices and the public interest are being grappled with.
One particularly interesting case study in museum management over the past decade has been the ambitious and quite unique globalisation strategy of the Guggenheim museums. In a sense, the strategies pursued by the Guggenheim Foundation (the umbrella entity under which the various museums sit) and its director, Thomas Krens, take these relationships a step further beyond the current, albeit dynamic, orthodoxy of museum/business associations. The Guggenheim Foundation has created a worldwide brand, which, amongst the more disparaging of its critics, has been likened to a fast food packaged goods company like McDonalds or KFC. To others however, like Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times, Krens has "articulated a vision of the art museum in the 21st century that transcends the old parochial model...a museum counterpart, perhaps, to the World Wide Web - circulating shows among its outposts, all of which benefit from one another."
The Guggenheim family of museums which sit within the Guggenheim Foundation include New York, Venice, Las Vegas, Berlin and Bilbao. New York was the first and continues to be the Foundation's flagship. Venice was established from the Peggy Guggenheim collection and the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Foundation. The two that I want to focus on for this online case study are the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in particular, but also the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin. The financial structures and management models for these museums are quite innovative and like them or hate them, have provided a new impetus for the way in which museums are administered.
The Guggenheim Bilbao, like the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin, it is not owned by the Foundation but the Guggenheim provides curatorial direction and management services and shares its collections and programs. Its development came about as a result of a unique collaboration between the Guggenheim and the Basque Regional Government where the Basques put up USD 150 million for the construction of the building and to acquire art and pays a fee to the Guggenheim for its curatorial and management services. There is no question it has been hugely successful in terms of exposure and audience attendances. It has also helped to put on the map an economically moribund industrial city that few people outside of Spain had heard of, let alone visited, prior to the Guggenheim's arrival.
This has become known as the 'Bilbao Effect' - the conversion of cultural capital to economic capital and interestingly a number of other museums have followed suit - not least the Louvre and Centre Pompidou which are both in the process of establishing 'branches' in little known industrial cities in France's north, and both eager to use eye catching contemporary architecture to give them a unique identity.
The Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin is a collaboration between the Deutsche Bank and the Guggenheim Foundation in an alliance which perhaps takes the model of public/private partnership to its logical conclusion. Like the Guggenheim Bilbao, the Deutsche Bank has not only 'bought' the Guggenheim name, but pays an annual stipend for services provided and has undertaken to acquire and commission art for which it pays but which is owned 50/50 between Deutsche Bank and the Guggenheim Foundation. This has caused some disquiet amongst commentators in Germany who claim that Deutsche Bank is investing in art that will hardly be seen there.
What we see emerging from the suite of museums which have been established under the Guggenheim umbrella is a structure which, although the ownership may vary, is nevertheless uniform in the way it presents the Guggenheim 'product' - through management, branding and marketing and through the sharing and exhibiting of the collection.
It is no wonder that the Guggenheim has been likened to a franchise operation. A parent organisation sells the brand and product but the owner of the individual franchise must adhere to strict guidelines in the way they operate that business. This provides most importantly for economies of scale but also for consistency in the way in which the product is presented and marketed. This consistency contributes to the building of the brand and what it stands for. When you go to McDonalds you know what you are going to get. When you go to a Guggenheim museum, you can be pretty sure about the experience you are likely to have there. Yet is this beneficial to the communities in which the Guggenheim is establishing itself and whilst they might benefit economically (as no doubt Bilbao would argue) do they really benefit culturally?
Thomas Krens would suggest that they absolutely do benefit from the presence of the Guggenheim. In a television interview with Charlie Rose in January, 2006 he claimed that it is not about exporting a commodity that is the same wherever you do it. He refers to it as an "exchange that works in two directions." He describes the Guggenheim bringing not only its own collection to Bilbao but other international exhibitions and in return Bilbao offers the Guggenheim the opportunity to explore the culture of the Spanish and Iberian Peninsula.
Detractors claim that the museum says next to nothing about the region's unique culture and history. According to Kim Bradley in Art in America, whilst the number of foreign visitors is increasing the attendance of Basques is declining - perhaps an indication that it is not seen as a truly Basque institution. Bradley looks at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao's acquisition history. Of the 84 artworks purchased to date, only 16 are by Basque artists. Similar conclusions might be drawn when one reviews the exhibition history of the museum. Looking back to its inception, there are very few exhibitions at Bilbao which relate specifically to Spanish artists and many of the exhibitions are the international ones that rotate to other Guggenheim sites. One could argue that the Guggenheim Bilbao is not building and supporting local culture but rather is imposing content from above (or abroad) which potentially could have an homogenising effect on the kind of art that is presented as well as other serious ramifications for the museum and community including the loss of local curatorial expertise and a relegation of Basque culture to second place.
It seems to me that the Guggenheim global strategy was born from the enormous, and perhaps unexpected, success of Bilbao. As Krens admits in his interview with Charlie Rose, he was not at all interested in the project in Bilbao but it was the Basque Government which initiated and pushed for the project...and funded it. Perhaps as Paul Werner says, Krens just got lucky in Bilbao.
Flushed with this success, however, many more projects have been discussed in locations scattered around the globe - from Mexico to Rio, Taiwan to Dubai. To date however, only one stand-alone building has been completed (Bilbao) plus two exhibition spaces in existing buildings (Berlin and Las Vegas). The Guggenheim has not been able to replicate the success of Bilbao and in recent years has suffered financial difficulties which some critics put down to these overly ambitious plans.
So what does the future hold for the art museum and how has the Guggenheim contributed to this dialogue.
As alluded to earlier, other museums are expanding beyond their original institutions by opening branches primarily in other parts of their countries of origin. As well as the Louvre and the Centre Pompidou, one might also make reference to the Tate which now has not only two museums in London but also one in Liverpool and another on the Cornwall coast. The difference however lies in the fact that as far as I can surmise from my web based research, these are in effect not 'business' transactions. They are not selling anything to an entity quite separate to themselves. They might be supported by funds of regional and city governments and centrally managed but their strategy seems less about selling to the highest bidder and more about expanding their collection beyond the immediate environs of London or Paris. It is a more contained and less aggressive strategy.
This argument however, will not hold water for long. Alan Riding in the New York Times claims that these institutions are now looking to expand globally and are not only seeking relationships with other art museums internationally but are vying for a presence in some major development projects in Asia. The Centre Pompidou is part of a consortium bidding to develop the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong. The Art Newspaper has also reported in August 2006, that the chairman of the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority met with the director of the Louvre to discuss the possibility of that institution collaborating on the cultural development in the United Arab Emirates capital.
So the global bandwagon marches on despite the mixed success of the Guggenheim.
There is not enough space here to discuss some of the other issues raised by the Guggenheim's global strategy (some will be dealt with in my essay), but suffice to list them as food for thought: