Ya que estamos hablando sobre Museos...

Solo basta con un ejemplo...hagan su comparación...


The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Philippe de Montebello, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.



Sensation y Rudolph Giuliani en controversias...miren como la gente habla y discute,
igualito que aquí.



directores accesibles a todos, wow...
Interview with Robert Haywood, Deputy Director at the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore. This is during the exhibition "Broadcast."



Hans Ulrich Obrist, (el que ayudo a los Cazadilla), Swiss curator, art critic, artist, scientist, writer, curator, composer, architect, thinker talking and lecturing about his interviews and discussion with Philippe Parreno and architects, urbanists, scientists, linguists, philosophers and non-mainstream filmmakers, conversations between the temporal dimensions of visual production...

Directores de Museos en las Grandes Ligas

Grandes ejemplos de "periodismo cultural" ante la reciente salida del controversial, flamante y genial Thomas Krens. Un gran ejemplo para Miyuca, Lourdes Ramos, el alcalde de Bayamón y sus respectivas Juntas.


OUR LONG CULTURAL NIGHTMARE WILL SOON BE OVER
by Jerry Saltz

While many Americans carry Bush Countdown Clocks -- today ticking at 326 days -- last night at a big art-world bash more than a few disbelieving yet ecstatic art-worlders were burbling about creating "Thomas Krens Countdown Clocks." That’s because on Wednesday evening news spread that Krens, the Guggenheim Museum’s controversial dictatorial head for almost 20 years -- 7,300 days, for clock-watchers -- will be stepping down from his post. Well, not quite stepping down; he’ll oversee the creation of the gargantuan 452,000-square-foot Frank Gehry-designed museum in Abu Dhabi. (According to the New York Times, he’ll stay on in his current position until a successor is found.)
Over the last two decades Krens changed museum culture in the West. He made museums corporate and ran the Guggenheim like a business -- even if that business often careened like an out-of-control savings and loan.

He branded the Guggenheim and kicked off the starchitect phase of museum culture, building and closing snazzy outlets around the world, most notably the grand shining building in Bilbao. Krens turned his museum into a spectacle and opened it up to the public, mounting crowd-pleasers and blockbusters like "The Art of the Motorcycle," "China," "Russia!," "Brazil," and other unfocused national smorgasbords that had less to do with the Guggenheim’s original mission than in doing deals in other countries. (He also oversaw excellent exhibitions of contemporary artists like Jenny Holzer and Matthew Barney.)

For all practical purposes the Krens clock began ticking last summer when Lisa Dennison stepped down from her position of museum director. It was widely understood that no real candidate for the job would appear unless Krens stepped away from any day-to-day operations, as just his presence muddied the waters around the museum. With Krens finally away trying to change museum culture in the Middle East, the Guggenheim could become a real force in the New York art world overnight. The building is unique; the capable staff is hungry; the art world is eager to welcome the Guggenheim back into the fold.

Meanwhile in Abu Dhabi, a quick check to numerous government websites will confirm that Israeli passport holders and travelers whose passports bear Israeli stamps will be denied entry visas to the Emirates. Thus, Krens will continue to do what he does best: try to accessorize the museum while sullying the Guggenheim’s good name, recklessly removing the "heim" from Guggenheim.


JERRY SALTZ is art critic for New York Magazine, where this article first appeared. He can be reached at jerry_saltz@newyorkmag.com


Thomas Krens to bow out at Guggenheim
The foundation's director will leave the post this year but stay on to guide its United Arab Emirates project.
By Paul Lieberman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 28, 2008


NEW YORK -- Thomas Krens, the risk-taking museum head who led the Guggenheim organization on an international building and branding spree, will step down this year as director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, its board chairman is expected to announce today.

Krens, who has held the post since 1988, will relinquish it once a successor is found and continue supervising the last of his grand projects, construction of a Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, according to a written statement by the foundation's chairman, William Mack.

The 6-foot-5, motorcycle-riding Krens became a lightning rod figure in the art world as he spearheaded the Guggenheim's creation of Gehry's swirling museum in Bilbao, Spain, which was an instant international sensation, but also initiated projects that fell far sort of expectations, such as a branch on the Las Vegas Strip.

Krens scaled back his role 2 1/2 years ago, when he turned over directorship of the flagship Guggenheim in New York to its veteran chief curator, Lisa Dennison. But Dennison announced last summer that she was leaving to become an executive vice president of the Sotheby's auction house

The board committee that had been looking for a new head of the Fifth Avenue museum now has "redefined the parameters of the search," according to the statement, to first find a director of the broader foundation, which oversees that museum and others in Venice and Berlin, as well as Bilbao and Las Vegas, where the Guggenheim has a joint venture with Russia's Hermitage Museum.

Krens, 61, is a member of the search committee, which now will have a far more powerful job to offer potential candidates. "We expect interest will be high and that the candidates will be top tier," Mack said in the statement, which also noted that Krens would still be a prime player in "the largest and most complex initiative ever undertaken by the Foundation," namely the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, which is scheduled to open in 2012 and be a third larger than Gehry's acclaimed structure in Bilbao.

None of the principals could be reached for comment Wednesday, but in the statement Krens said he looked forward to making the Abu Dhabi project -- one of a string of museums being built there -- "a new model for a universal contemporary museum."

paul.lieberman@latimes.com

Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, post-Krens?
Saturday March 1, 2008 | 14:22 by The Transom | permalink
This thought in from Steven Kaplan in Manhattan
Artworld Salon

Thomas Krens will step down after nearly twenty years as director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, and the search for his successor has officially begun. This announcement is barely two days old, but the art pundits are already circling like hawks high above the Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda, gliding over the thermal gradients for indications of future trends, while also hunting smaller anecdotal tidbits to feast upon.

If the age of Krens is soon to recede in our collective rear view mirror, how will it be remembered? As a period when the establishment of a coherent aesthetic identity for the museum took a back seat to the art of the deal? When international franchising and corporate sponsorship became overriding determinants of exhibition content? When fashion, architecture and other borrowed interests reigned at the expense of the art itself? Or did Krens manage to create a system of patronage and power that will endure? Was he in fact a visionary, an advocate of his own peculiar manifest destiny: always expanding, always seeking out new funding, always ready to open his doors if the price was right, while placing greater and greater financial demands upon his board of trustees, who perhaps finally had
no choice but to mutiny?

Part of the answer will be determined by the policies and personae of his successors. In particular there remains the legacy of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, the jewel of his franchising effort, “35 percent larger than Bilbao”. A major mission for Krens (and starchitect Frank Gehry is the completion of this monolith in the desert. It is the fulfillment of his expansionist dream and his ultimate expression of museum realpolitik. Because when domestic benefactors such as Peter B. Lewis balked at the huge cost of funding the satellite projects, Krens did an end run and appealed directly to the oil-rich sheiks — in much the same way that the banks have recently looked to UAE money to bail them out of the mortgage crisis.

The Guggenheim is presently committed to building their satellite in Abu Dhabi. But as the museum reassesses its priorities, considers its post-Krens identity, and examines its finite resources, one can imagine a revision of this decision. Especially in light of the Emirates’ policies of not allowing entry to Israeli passport-holders and their censorship of gay content and nudity in the art to be exhibited.

The final decision of whether or not to proceed is reserved to the museum’s board of trustees. But I would pose the following questions to ArtWorld Salon readers: Should institutional initiatives be reconsidered in light of new economic realities and new leadership? Should the leftover projects of an old regime be cleared out, to allow the new director a “clean slate”? And might the fate of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi give us some indication of how museums will operate in a post-Krens era?

INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY
by Charlie Finch

Like Jay Gatsby or Charles Foster Kane, Thomas Krens, who is completing his 20-year-long reign as the head of the Guggenheim Foundation and its assorted satellites, was a fictional figure addicted to grand gestures which kept him at arm’s length from the public he served. More than anyone else, Krens manufactured the global art world whose bounty continues to enrich the art plutocracy today.
This small elite vied to touch the hem of his golden garment, as Krens the transformative figure granted his blessing while picking their pockets of money and prestige. Many of the high-end conventions that appear so normal in today’s art world were inventions of Thomas Krens: the fashion connection epitomized by his controversial exhibition of Armani as high art; the fetishization of so-called starchitects begun with Frank Gehry’s phantasmagoria, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; the power of machine dreams, realized in Kren’s motorcycle caravans from New York to Las Vegas and back.

Thomas Krens normalized the competition among the art-world rich for status and prestige by creating every kind of board and support system to which they could lend their assets. By spending this coin freely, he kept the pressure on his supporters until, like Peter Lewis and Ronald Perelman, they cracked under the weight of his demands. Krens’ solution was to aim higher to the palaces of the Arab Emirates, a prescient move, because this capital now directs the major international banks that have suffered in the mortgage crisis.

Curatorially, the land of Krens evoked the carnival and the circus. Whether showing Spanish painting gems, Aztec war toys, garments or bikes, Krens’ vision included the kitchen sink, the golden bidet and everything in between. This curatorial domination shaped the art fairs, the auction houses and the megagalleries by turning everything into an art that was at once contemporary and exchangeable in ever increasing increments of value.

The Guggenheim, under Krens, produced retrospectives of prime artists like Ellsworth Kelly and Robert Rauschenberg, but these, as good as they were, are but a footnote to his legacy. As he passes into myth, a protean figure of controversy, who was the antithesis of intimacy, the art world today can say, for better or worse, "This was our God."


CHARLIE FINCH is co-author of Most Art Sucks: Five Years of Coagula (Smart Art Press).

Guggenheim's master of the art of global branding steps down as museum director
Ed Pilkington in New York
Friday February 29, 2008
The Guardian, London

Thomas Krens, the man who helped turn the Guggenheim into a globally renowned art brand and expanded its reach through audacious projects around the world, is to step down from one of the top jobs in museum direction after almost 20 years.
His stepping aside brings to an end an era in the history of the Guggenheim and could have a big impact on both its future and that of art museum direction in general. He is seen as a pioneer of the model of global branding that has been echoed by other big institutions.

But Krens has also been a figure of controversy, with his reputation for an abrasive management style and for the priorities he brought to the Guggenheim.
A graduate of the Yale school of management, he was a representative of a new breed of museum directors whose expertise lies in business organisation rather than in traditional academic scholarship.

His term in office saw the Guggenheim expand, both in terms of its endowment, which increased six times to $118m (£52m), and in its global stretch. His flagship project was the Bilbao Guggenheim, the instantly recognisable titanium-clad building designed by Frank Gehry that has proven to be a huge success, attracting 1m visitors a year.

Under Krens' leadership, a new Guggenheim museum, again designed by Gehry, is to be completed in Abu Dhabi in 2012 which will embody his global ambitions by exhibiting art from all over the world.

But the worldwide empire-building also brought Krens criticism that he was failing to nurture the jewel in the Guggenheim crown - the Frank Lloyd Wright building in New York's upper east side.

Three years ago he was involved in a bruising struggle with the largest donor to the Solomon R Guggenheim foundation, Peter Lewis, who resigned after he accused Krens of losing sight of the main focus of the organisation - its New York flagship.

Many of Krens' most ambitious overseas projects failed to get off the ground, and though the model of branding and expansion has been mirrored by institutions such as the Tate in the UK and the Louvre in Paris, they have tended to be more modest in scale or have been achieved, as in the case of the Louvre, with government support.

Krens was also the subject of the mumblings of art critics who said his choice of shows on occasions fell short in terms of scholarship.

He staged a show of Armani suits sponsored by Armani itself, while The Art of the Motorcycle was in part paid for by BMW.

Under the terms of his change in job title, Krens will remain in charge of the Abu Dhabi project, which he said was "truly spectacular" in its scope and scale. "Our objective is to make something completely new, the best museum of modern and contemporary art in the world."

But his departure allows the Guggenheim to bring the New York flagship back under the same management umbrella as the foundation's other possessions: Bilbao, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin and the Guggenheim Hermitage in Las Vegas. It also opens the door to applications from top museum professionals who had been known to be hesitant to work beneath the dominant figure of Krens.

"We expect interest will be high and the candidates will be top tier," the foundation's chairman, William Mack, said.

Robin Cembalest, executive editor of ARTnews, said that by vacating the post, Krens had "opened the door to curators and directors from major institutions applying for the top job. Who the board picks will give a clear sign of where they want the Guggenheim to go."

Guggenheim Loses Krens as His Splashy Style Thrives Worldwide
Commentary by James S. Russell
Feb. 29 (Bloomberg)

The news that Thomas Krens will depart as director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was as startling as it was sudden. Now that his numerous critics have gotten their way, what will become of the Guggenheim?

Krens has been a lightening rod for much of his 20-year tenure. He attracted criticism for overly commercial shows and ``franchising'' the Guggenheim ``brand'' in elaborate branches planned worldwide that have largely failed to materialize.

The board may feel he didn't tend the New York garden well enough -- raising too little cash and adding too little to the core collection -- while crusading for a Frank Gehry-designed cultureplex halfway around the world. His expansive and controversial vision for the museum will be hard to undo, though, assuming the board wants to.

His departure, of course, coincides with the ascendancy of his world view. He not only conjured up the proposed Abu Dhabi Guggenheim (a project he'll continue to run for the foundation), he persuaded Emirates authorities to make culture the centerpiece of its location, the $27 billion Saadiyat Island development.

The Guggenheim -- along with the Louvre, a performing-arts complex, a maritime museum and the Sheikh Zayed National Museum, all designed by celebrity architects -- will dominate the development's skyline. Smaller pavilions for temporary art exhibitions will line its chief boulevard.

Bigger and Bigger

These enormous museums set some critics' teeth grinding. (The Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi, at 320,000 square feet, or 30,000 square meters, will be a third larger than the hefty branch in Bilbao, Spain). It's showmanship and spectacle, not art, they say. Krens has never apologized for wanting to astonish visitors.

Indeed, the great size of these institutions accommodates a hunger for art in the most rapidly developing parts of the world. (In China, they're building museums before they have collections.) Consider how big Art Basel and other fairs have become, thick with newly wealthy Russians and Indians.

Krens identified a desire for spectacle among artists, not just architects. It has always been a big factor in art, though banished for decades by the modernist era's early austerity. Now it has returned as a defining character of contemporary art.

Krens made the entrance plaza of the Guggenheim Bilbao available for Jeff Koons's crowd-pleasing, flower-bedecked giant ``Puppy,'' yet other museums have done so too. The ultra- tasteful new Broad wing of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art allocated its largest space for a single artist to -- Koons.

Expanded Possibilities

Did Krens invent Cai Guo-Qiang, whose somersaulting sedans dangle today in the New York Guggenheim's spiral? No, the art market and public appetite did. Yet by understanding what was possible in the Frank Lloyd Wright building, Krens made Cai and others possible.

Before Krens, the New York building was regarded as a curatorial black hole. He and savvy curators have shown that a wide variety of works not only can be displayed well in the space, they can thrive.

``Artists get tired of interacting with same old white cubes,'' observed Gehry, architect of Bilbao and Abu Dhabi, in a recent conversation. For artists, sculptural architectural spaces, he noted, ``are a new kind of provocation. They allow you to change your language and move you somewhere else.''

Krens recognized early that art needn't be confined to antiseptic rooms that mount every piece in lonely, worship- inducing splendor. Encouraging art to engage with architecture, and vice versa, is another way of saying art and artists can engage with visitors. Symphony orchestras would love to have the audiences that museums enjoy these days.

Krens's view is not for everyone. Yet, at its best, it's amazing how alive his approach to art can be. Returning to the sleepy pre-Krens past is not an option for the Guggenheim. His high-wire act will be an extremely hard one to follow.

(James S. Russell is Bloomberg's U.S. architecture critic. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this story: James S. Russell in New York at jamesrussell@earthlink.net .


Charlie Rose