“It allowed for the full story of the Guggenheim’s Collection to be told from its founding in almost seventy years ago in 1937 by Solomon Guggenheim and Hilla Rebay which also confirms our German roots…” said Thomas Krens, director of the Guggenheim Foundation about the current exhibition “The Guggenheim Collection” at the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany) in Bonn/Germany. KAH Bonn and Kunstmuseum, Bonn/Germany. Press conference, July 20, 2006. Part 1/2.
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00 [ Background noise ]
00:04 >> When serious discussions
00:07 about this project began several years ago,
00:13 I was very much aware of the history at the Kunst
00:19 und Nationalen Zahler of doing collection exhibitions
00:25 from some of the world's great museums.
00:28 And I was also somewhat aware that this was perhaps an
00:34 opportunity to try to tell from the Guggenheim perspective a
00:40 fairly complex story because we are not a single institution
00:48 with a collection primarily in one location.
00:54 And as you know, the Guggenheim, of course,
00:57 in Bilbao has attracted a good deal of attention.
01:02 And also the fact that we have investigated projects
01:07 in other parts of the world that have not been realized also
01:12 attracts a good deal of attention
01:13 and a good deal of criticism.
01:16 And I saw this as an opportunity in Germany
01:20 where I believe the awareness
01:23 of the Guggenheim is perhaps greater almost
01:27 than any other country in the world.
01:29 Obviously we have a small facility in Berlin.
01:33 We've been there 10 years almost in a partnership
01:38 with Deutsche Bank that has been very, very successful for us
01:44 and very successful, I believe, for Deutsche Bank.
01:47 We're in the process now
01:49 of negotiating our third five-year collaboration.
01:54 And Germany was always a special place
01:58 and I thought would be receptive to the complexity
02:01 of this kind of story.
02:04 Because first of all, I did not want
02:06 to do simply a 19th century early modernist masterpieces
02:10 exhibition, which could have been done, but it's the kind
02:14 of projects that we've seen before.
02:17 I was very interested.
02:20 I'm also aware that the Guggenheim
02:22 in New York is a relatively small institution.
02:25 We only have about 5,000 square meters of exhibition space
02:29 and we do large-scale exhibitions and we have very,
02:36 very little space for a permanent collection.
02:40 And we have a very large
02:41 and extensive permanent collection that takes us right
02:44 through the present.
02:46 So I said to Wenzel when he made this proposition,
02:48 could we do a -- could we tell the whole story
02:52 of the Guggenheim, the great collections
02:55 that have come together to form a great museum?
02:58 But could we take it up through the present
03:01 and that required having space, more space than is typical
03:06 for a project of this kind.
03:07 In fact, perhaps even more space than is available
03:11 in the Kunst-Internationalen Halle.
03:14 And Wenzel was willing and I suggested that we also talk
03:20 to Dieter Rontel to see if we could take a part
03:22 of this exhibition, a critical part of this exhibition,
03:26 and at the very same time put it into the Kunstmuseum Bonn.
03:33 And I think that the results in both buildings,
03:38 which you will see or haven't seen, are quite spectacular.
03:43 But in addition to that, I was also going back
03:46 to Wenzel's reference about the image
03:50 of the Guggenheim being inexorably connected
03:53 to architecture.
03:55 I was also interested in telling the story simultaneously
03:59 of the architecture of the Guggenheim, both the projects
04:02 that have been realized and the projects
04:04 that have been engaged and not realized.
04:08 And part of the reason for doing that is --
04:10 or wanting that is not just the fact that these projects
04:15 by themselves, particularly the ones that are realized
04:18 like the Frank Lloyd Wright Building in New York
04:20 and the Frank Gehry Building in Bilbao.
04:23 It's not only that these are among the iconic buildings
04:27 in the history of architecture,
04:29 but I also think there's a larger story here
04:32 about how a cultural institution actively seeks
04:37 to engage change and to try to understand that we're moving
04:42 into a completely different condition in the 21st century,
04:46 a global condition where cultural communication is going
04:51 to be more important than ever for all kinds of reasons,
04:55 most of which are self-evident.
04:58 But that part of the way that we feel that we can do this is
05:03 by engaging different regions of the world as part
05:10 of a Guggenheim network of cultural dialogue,
05:15 cultural discourse, and cultural exchange.
05:19 To have a Guggenheim in Bilbao has been an extraordinary
05:25 opportunity for us because we are, as well as being
05:29 a New York institution in Bilbao, we are a Basque
05:33 and Spanish institution.
05:34 It shapes our identity.
05:36 We have a priority for programming the Basque
05:40 and Spanish exhibitions and developing a collection
05:44 in Bilbao, and that creates a bigger opportunity for us
05:48 in New York to do retrospectives of artists
05:53 like Giorgio Tessa or Eduardo Chieda
05:56 or Christina Iglesias and others.
05:59 So I see this Guggenheim Foundation as a kind
06:04 of window to the world
06:07 through which great ideas are exchanged.
06:10 And as I discussed this with Wenzel, I said, you know,
06:14 we'd also, we need some space
06:15 for the architecture of the Guggenheim.
06:18 And as it happened, that exhibition, or as it happens,
06:23 that exhibition will open about a month from now
06:26 in this very building, in the space that's currently occupied
06:30 by the Chinese exhibition of the Xian Warriors,
06:35 of the Xian works.
06:37 So what was presented to us, or what evolved,
06:41 I think was an extraordinary opportunity.
06:44 More than twice the space, almost three times the space
06:48 that you would normally have for an exhibition.
06:51 It allowed for the full story
06:54 of the Guggenheim's collection to be told from its founding
06:58 in almost 70 years ago, in 1937, by Solomon Guggenheim
07:03 and Hilla Rebay, which also reconfirms our German roots.
07:12 It tracks the history of the collections coming together,
07:18 the Tannhauser Collection, the Pegge-Guggenheim Collection,
07:21 the Dreyer, the Nierendorf Collection,
07:23 the Panzer de Bumo Collection in 1991, which was, at the time,
07:29 probably the greatest collection of American art of the '60s
07:32 and '70s, and clearly put the Guggenheim on a path
07:38 toward having a great and comprehensive overall collection.
07:41 And then the Bowen Foundation Collection,
07:44 which was recently given by Fred Henry,
07:48 one of the Guggenheim trustees.