Title: CARLO CARDAZZO. A New Vision for Art
Location: VENICE - Guggenheim Museum
Start Date: 2008-11-01
End Date: 2009-02-09

In the contemporary art world following the Second World War, few personalities matched the enterprise and volcanic curiosity of the Venetian Carlo Cardazzo (1908–63). This exhibition, the first to be dedicated to Cardazzo, documents the variety of his interests as a patron of the arts, collector, publisher and gallerist (his Galleria del Cavallino opened in Venice in 1942).

Title: Installations: Selections from the Guggenheim Collections
Location: BILBAO - Guggenheim Museum
Start Date: 2008-04-29
End Date: 2009-01-11

One of the major developments of recent art history, installation art came to prominence in the early 1990s as a mode of art production centered on the creation of an immersive physical experience. Looking back to the pioneering Happenings of the 1950s, as well as Minimalist and Post-Minimalist artists like Richard Serra, who highlighted bodily awareness through sculptural interventions, artists in the 1990s expanded the work of art into a multimedia environment.

Title: theanyspacewhatever
Location: NEW YORK - Guggenheim Museum
Description: A genealogy of their shared history through site-specific installations of new, often self-reflexive works created on the occasion of this project.
Start Date: 2008-10-24
End Date: 2009-01-07

During the 1990s a number of artists claimed the exhibition as their medium. Working independently or in various collaborative constellations, they eschewed the individual object in favor of the exhibition environment as a dynamic arena, ever expanding its physical and temporal parameters.

Title: Catherine Opie: American Photographer
Location: NEW YORK - Guggenheim Museum
Description: A complex body of photographic work
Start Date: 2008-09-26
End Date: 2009-01-07

Since the early 1990s, Catherine Opie has produced a complex body of photographic work, adopting such diverse genres as studio portraiture, landscape photography, and urban street photography to explore notions of communal, sexual, and cultural identity.

Back in 2007 when it was announced that a new Guggenheim museum was being built in Abu Dhabi, ultra-modern city of the Arab Emirates, the meandering news of the possibility of creating also a new Louvre in the wealthy Arab country seemed quite plausible. In fact the notification was revealed to be well-founded and was confirmed in the following months: the agreement between the Louvre and the Arab Emirates has been sealed and signed by the French Minister for Culture, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, and the person in charge of tourism in Abu Dhabi, sultan bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan.

Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum looks set to receive a branch building, located in the countryside area close to the city. The new 100-million-euro satellite structure will be built in the UNESCO Urdaibai Nature reserve, and will be financed by local authorities, as announced by Jose Luis Bilbao, head of the Vizcaya provincial government.
The project is intended to conjugate “art, sustainability, the natural setting and economic activity in the area,” said Juan Ignacio Vidarte, director of the Bilbao Guggenheim.
The architect selected to design the museum is still unnamed, also the realization and opening timetable remains unresolved.

Last 12th June, Lithuania approved the project for the new museum of the capital city Vilnius (nominated European capital of culture for 2009), realized in collaboration with two great international realities: the Guggenheim Museum and the Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg.
It is estimated that the project will cost 117 million dollars, 15% of which will be funded by the Lithuanian government. The date scheduled for its realization is 2011. According to previsions, more than 400,000 visitors are expected every year.

translated by Giorgina Arcuri

The story of the rise of the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami seems to be unstoppable. The huge success obtained at the MoCa Los Angeles to open the world tour of his retrospectives was not enough, which until May 2009 will hit the greatest artistic institutions like the Brooklyn Museum New York (until 13th July 2008), the Museum fu Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt (September 2008 – January 2009) and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (February – May 2009).

Article translated by Amritee Mahabir

A few days ago the Guggenheim Bilbao was forced to fire their own finance director (CFO) who confessed to having embezzled half a million euros from the museum. The Guggenheim inaugurated its futuristic site in Bilbao in 1997. From then on, the museum has on average attracted a million visitors annually. Since its opening day, Roberto Cearsolo Barrenetxea was head of the finance division with high responsibility tasks in directing the museum. The decision to expel Cearsolo was reached following verifications that led them to confirm his involvement in illegally laundering a significant amount of money from the Guggenheim’s coffers.