STILLSPOTTING NYC
With major support from the Rockefeller Foundation NYC Opportunities Fund, the Guggenheim presents stillspotting nyc, a two-year project that takes the museum’s Architecture and Urban Studies programs onto the streets of New York City and across all five boroughs. Exploring how urban dwellers find respite and peace in “the city that never sleeps,” stillspotting nyc seeks to transform the built environment and provide instances of calm and respite in unusual places and innovative ways. From June 2011 through October 2012, architects, designers, composers, and visual and sound artists are identifying, creating, and/or transforming five “stillspots”—unique sites in the city’s boroughs that offer repose. Each “stillspot” is open to the public via a walking tour or invites visitors to participate in an installation, event, or other experience. The Guggenheim has also partnered with local academic institutions to produce visualizations of the city’s patterns of stress and calm, and the results include a noise map, data studies, and video studies—all providing rich additional context for stillspotting nyc. The final edition of the project will be presented in the Bronx in October 2012.
Asian Art Program
In 2006, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum became the first modern art museum in the West to hire a senior curator of Asian art, cementing its commitment to integrate the study, research, and presentation of Asian art into its exhibition, education, and acquisitions strategies. In the years since then, the Guggenheim has developed a robust Asian Art Program that includes a diverse roster of exhibitions supported by award-winning scholarly catalogues, a curatorial fellowship, and an advisory council—all advancing the program’s central goal to promote a transnational understanding of art history with a focus on Asian art. While actively growing its collection of Asian art, the museum has mounted a series of groundbreaking shows organized under the auspices of the Asian Art Program, including The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989 (2009), winner of the 2009 International Association of Art Critics award for the Best Thematic Museum Show in New York City; and Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity (2011). The Asian Art Curatorial Fellowship, generously supported by the Contemporary Art Foundation, Taiwan, allows emerging scholars of Asian art to gain valuable hands-on experience working in the museum’s Asian Art Department; while the Asian Art Council, comprised of some twenty critics, academics, curators, and artists, continues to guide and critique the intellectual and strategic development of the Guggenheim’s Asian Art Program within the context of a modern art museum with an international scope and vision.
Capital Projects
In 2011, The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, The Evelyn Sharp Foundation, and the Leon Levy Foundation generously contributed toward renovation of the museum’s eighth floor and naming of the Mary Sharp Cronson Boardroom in honor of Mrs. Cronson’s dedicated service as a member of the Guggenheim’s Board of Trustees and her work as Founder and Producer of Works & Process. Support from all three foundations helped to underwrite the expense of transforming the museum’s eighth floor into flexible-use space that can better accommodate the Guggenheim’s Board of Trustees and also serve as a hub for educational programs, symposia, and workshops. The newly renovated space is also becoming an important gathering place for artists, donors, visiting scholars, and other key constituents.
The Guggenheim is also grateful to the city and state of New York for supporting its major multi-million dollar restoration project to refurbish the museum’s exterior and upgrade key building infrastructure systems, completed in 2008. Additional funding from the city and state is currently supporting projects—from elevator renovation and lighting upgrades to construction of an on-site conservation lab and updated security systems—that will help ensure the ongoing integrity of the restoration while supporting the Guggenheim’s capacity to best serve as broad a public as possible in the museum’s landmark building.
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Installation view: To a Great City, 7 World Trade Center, September 15–18 and 22–25, 2011. Photo: Kristopher McKay © The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York