There was a moment, around 2000, when the great constellation of Guggenheim museums that was beginning to spread across the world became dim. In 2016, the Helsinki center failed for the second time with the project idea and, that same year, closed its doors in Berlin, opened in 1997. Along the way, they ended up in Salzburg, Río de Janeiro, Guadalajara (Mexico), Seoul, Taichun (Taiwan) and lower Manhattan, a supposed second headquarters of New York. They then left only two institutions to move forward: in Abu Dhabi and Urdaibai, in a biosphere reserve in the Basque Country. Among the spaces that will be grouped, pending confirmation, in Manhattan, Bilbao and in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, three are the only seats that house the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.
After the death on December 5 of Frank Gehry, the architect who designed the Guggenheim Foundation’s final projects, photos of the building he designed for Abu Dhabi appeared in the art press. This large museum would have been completed in 2025 for its inauguration in 2026, but today the cranes and part of the skeleton of the structure will be revealed.
It has been 20 years since we first saw this building, built in 2011 in the northwestern part of Saadiyat Island, where the cultural district of one of the seven countries of the United Arab Emirates Federation is designed. Gehry designed the largest Guggenheim in the world, which will cover 42,000 square meters (the one in Bilbao has 24,000 and the one in New York does not reach 5,000). Work stopped in 2019 and resumed after the pandemic. At the moment, the Abu Dani Tourism Development Company Foundation, thanks to the project, has held an inauguration on the island, from where you can visit the Louvre franchise and the Zayed National Museum, the local institution.
Next week there will be a key meeting under the patronage of the Guggenheim to decide on the future of the Urdaibai headquarters, in a biosphere reserve in the Basque Country. The execution plan now expires and remains without agreement between local public administrations and local associations that oppose the project in this area.
Local conflicts also played a key role in ensuring that the Helsinki Museum was written. Local authorities rejected the initial project in 2012 by eight votes to seven, deeming it too costly. In the summer of 2015, French studio Moreau Kusunoki won the architectural competition launched by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to design a new museum in the beautiful city. The New York Foundation launched this architectural competition in an attempt to win the favor of the Finnish public opinion and the most reluctant local politicians, by presenting a completely completed project and as attractive as possible.
Only a year later, in 2016, the city council began to reject, on this occasion, forever, a complex formed by new pabellones and a tower made of wood and glass, located in the central port of the Finnish capital. For its expansion, the Consistorio has reserved a space of 18,520 square meters, of which 12,000 square meters are intended for the building, with an exhibition space similar to that of the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
In the case of Berlin, the agreement between the Guggenheim Fund and Deutsche Bank ended in 2012, after 15 years. Located near Museum Island and in the middle of Linden, the iconic avenue that connects it to the Brandenburg Gate, the Deutsche Guggenheim — as if known as an art space — was one of the organization’s international icons.
The alliance between the bank and the foundation has enabled the creation of a collection enriched with annual contributions for contemporary creators. The list included notable names: Anish Kapoor, Gabriel Orozco, Gerhard Richter and Bill Viola, among others.
During the announcement, neither party offered any explanations. The imprecise promise to “reformulate the relationship between Deutsche Bank and Guggenheim” did not materialize. Shortly after, the banking entity inaugurated the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle space, focused on promoting emerging artists and exhibiting their works. The institution closed its doors in 2018 and was recycled into the PalaisPopulaire cultural center.
Juan Ignacio Vidarte, former director of the Guggeheim Bilbao and head of international expansion for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, warned in 2012, after the failed vote on the Helsinki headquarters, that the institution’s expansion strategy was about to reverse itself. Then, the director spoke of “projects without precise location”, in an interview with EL PAÍS. More than a decade later, the nearest and most concrete future lies on an island in the Persian Gulf.
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