NEWS ANALYSIS: Guggenheim study no guarantee
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By Vesa Sirén
Guggenheim Foundation deputy director Ari Wiseman’s eyes open up a bit when I plunk down an extensive study by the foundation dating back to 1990 on the construction of a Guggenheim museum in the Austrian city of Salzburg.
According to the foundation, none of the previous studies have been made public, but copies can nevertheless be found - for instance this one in the archives of the City of Salzburg.
To put it briefly, the report, comprising several hundred pages, is much more detailed than the one recently given to Helsinki. However, that museum was never built.
“That was before the museum in Bilbao was built. It is not comparable”, Wiseman says.
When the Bilbao Guggenheim became a tourist attraction and a goldmine in 1997, several countries and capitals paid the Guggenheim Foundation to plan something similar for them as well.
At best, the expensive studies are detailed, but rarely innovative. In practice they have been key money paid by the cities to show to the Guggenheim Foundation that they are serious about the project.
Key money for similar studies was paid by Taichung in Taiwan, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Guadalajara, Mexico.
In several cases an architectural contest was also arranged, but finally, political decision-makers rejected the projects, mainly for economic reasons.
In addition, and this is often not taken into consideration, the Guggenheim Foundation sold its know-how to places such as Hong Kong, the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, and many other cities for the overall development of their art scenes, and not for the construction of a museum bearing the name Guggenheim.
This is something that the media, and even representatives of the cities mentioned in the studies, do not always remember.
With Helsinki, the Guggenheim Foundation is nevertheless selling both its name and its expertise.
If an architectural competition is organised, the Guggenheim brand and the big budget are expected to bring with them architectural heavyweights - possibly Jean Nouvel and Frank Gehry, who designed the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum.
Gehry has indicated to Helsingin Sanomat that he would like to design a Guggenheim for Helsinki.
It would be interesting, to say the least, to compare their proposals with those of young Finnish architects.
Could some young architect make a breakthrough and create something that would not occur to the old stars?
It would be tantalising to reveal that the Guggenheim Foundation recycles the same lofty words from one study to another.
However, at least the studies concerning Salzburg and Helsinki are very different in their content as well.
Times have changed: of the massive 500 million dollar budget for the Salzburg museum, most would have been spent on the creation of the museum’s own art collection.
Having a collection of its own is not important for the Bilbao Museum, which currently contains only 100 permanent works. The Helsinki museum would also not primarily compile its own collections.
Therefore, the plans are not so much for a place of storage as for an arts recycling centre.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 11.1.2012
More on this subject:
 Working group favours construction of Guggenheim museum in Helsinki
Substantial donations in the offing for Guggenheim Museum
VESA SIRÉN / Helsingin Sanomat
vesa.siren@hs.fi
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