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Changing of the Guard,” 1988

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Changing of the Guard,” 1988 Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Changing of the Guard,” 1988 PART 1 FREDERICK WOOLWORTH Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Fred Woolworth. I’m president of the Art Dealers Association of America, which represents and includes 126 of the most important fine art visual dealers across America. We’re very happy to be here tonight to present the Seventh Annual Art Dealers Association lecture series which runs from tonight each Tuesday through October 25. I want to take this opportunity to thank the staff of the Guggenheim and the director, Tom Krens, for giving us this space for this evening. [00:01:00] And it’s my honor to introduce the moderator of tonight, Mr. Charlie Cowles, who I’ve known for many, many years, the former publisher of Art Forum, curator of the Seattle, Washington Museum, president and owner of the Charles Cowles Gallery, and Chairman of the Board of the New York Studio School, which is a small art school, which has its offices in the old Whitney Building on Eighth Street. Charles, if you could introduce your panel. Thank you. CHARLES COWLES Thank you. I’d like to thank you all for coming. I see we have a full house. (applause) [00:02:00] We have not spent hours rehearsing this. I’m going to introduce each of the participants and ask them then to introduce themselves by talking about their recent past and hopeful future, and that’s the future is really what this panel’s all about, that we need to know a little bit about the past to go into the future. So, with that, we will start with Tom Krens, who is the director of this institution and our host in a certain way this evening. We’re glad to be here and if you’d like to say something? THOMAS KRENS Well, Charles said five minutes to describe what you do and what you’d like to do. As some of you may know, I’ve just taken over the Guggenheim Foundation, or taken over, I was appointed its director on July 1, so I’ve only been here really for three months. For the last 17 years, I’ve been at Williams College where I teach in the Art Department, and have been for the past eight years, the director of the College Museum. That experience has also included supervising two new additions to the College Museum and a fairly substantial staff expansion. Since late 1986, I’ve been involved in an interesting project [00:03:00] in Massachusetts, it’s called the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. We call it Mass MOCA. One of its most distinguishing features is that it doesn’t exist yet, although we do have the authorization from the state for a $35 million bond issue and a commitment from a large industrial manufacturer, Sprague Technologies, to give the land and buildings which are about 20 acres, 28 buildings, and about 750,000 square feet of space. [00:04:00] It’s our intention to build a Museum of Contemporary Art with the partial qualification that it may be art simply of the last 30 years. One of the centerpieces of that enterprise from the art side will be the collection of Dr. and Mrs. Panza, who I notice are in the audience today, having just arrived, I believe, yesterday from Milan. Not for this panel, by the way, but it was coincidental. That’s the recent past. With respect to the future, [00:05:00] I hope you all noticed the construction trailer on the north side of the building as you came in today. The construction on the new Guggenheim addition began last Friday. It is our expectation that it will take three years to complete. And that construction will include a complete restoration of the existing Frank Lloyd Wright building both on the outside, Transcript © 2018 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF). All rights reserved. Page 1 of 26 Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Changing of the Guard,” 1988 with its surface materials needing or are in great need of care, and on the inside. [00:06:00] Coincidentally, with that activity, I think it will be my charge over the next three years to try to develop the best contemporary twentieth-century exhibitions program in New York City. If I don’t say this now, somebody else will, but (laughter) Kirk and I have also promised to schedule a motorcycle race down Fifth Avenue beginning at the Guggenheim and ending at 53rd Street, so we might do that for the panel discussion next year. In any case, I expect that those activities will pretty much keep me occupied [00:07:00] over the next three years. Beyond that, I think it’s a little bit difficult to predict. CHARLES COWLES Thank you very much. And we’ll hear more later. Julia Brown Turrell is the director of the Des Moines Art Center in Des Moines, Iowa, a very fine small museum in the Midwest, which I hope you’ve all visited. But in case you haven’t, Julia will tell us a little bit about it. JULIA BROWN TURRELL Thank you, Charlie. My most recent past has involved the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles where I was for five and a half years as senior curator. And there I was responsible for the exhibition and publication program and was one of the first curators and one of a small group of people that put that new institution into being. I came from that experience to an institution very, very different, the Des Moines Art Center, which actually is not so small. [00:08:00] It’s a museum of three buildings, one by Saarinen, one by I.M. Pei, and one by Richard Meier. And I inherited a wonderful, wonderful collection put together by [Jim Demetrian?] over a period of 15 years that he was there. And I am planning to continue it, the tradition that he began of searching for really key important individual works, but extending that collection into our outdoor spaces. The museum is located in a very beautiful park. So, we are developing a sculpture park of commissioning environmental pieces and are right now working with Robert Irwin and Chris Naumann, Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Sera, and C. Armajani to develop pieces for, large-scale pieces for the park. [00:09:00] And also, beginning to initiate exhibitions for the museum. The museum primarily had its focus on building the collection and we are beginning to do an ambitious exhibition program, but not in large-scale but in very focused individual exhibitions that will travel and catalogues that hopefully are distinguished by a unique character and very beautiful design in production. We are doing an exhibit of Bill Viola’s work with the Frankfurt Museum, Joel Shapiro, tracing the figure in his work from the last 20 years, a Sol LeWitt wall drawing show that will move into a commissioned work for the museum, a retrospective of Louis Baltz’s photography. So, these are just some of the directions we are moving in. We are also trying to develop collaborations with existing, some of [00:10:00] the special things that are there in Iowa, such as the writer’s workshop, the Iowa Writer’s Workshop which is known around the world. And we are doing a series of poetry readings with them, and also developing a book where poets will be invited to be commissioned to do poems on individual works in the collection which will then be gathered together in a special publication on the collection. We’re also doing a catalogue on the collection for children and starting a children’s membership program with, particularly with talks with arts for children. So, basically, what I’m trying to do there is take, build on a very good foundation, a very firm tradition and commitment that has served this institution and taking it into new directions, and it’s going very well. CHARLES COWLES Transcript © 2018 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF). All rights reserved. Page 2 of 26 Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Changing of the Guard,” 1988 I wish you all the best of luck. I go to Des Moines every [00:11:00] now and then for God knows why. It has for the last 25 years (laughter), Des Moines for the last 25 years has had a population of 200,000 people. It has not grown or shrunk, and yet it is one of the finest museums in a small town in the country. It’s really an amazing place. And a very supportive board and I think we’ll hear some great things from Julia in the future. Next, Rick Bretell, the new director of the Dallas Museum, which is one of my favorite buildings. I love Edward Larrabee Barnes’s building. And I hear there are sorts of wonderful things happening down there in the near future, assuming that there is no great economic upheaval. Why don’t you tell us what’s going on? RICHARD BRETELL Well, I think it’s wonderful that the American Art Dealers Association still thinks there’s enough money in Dallas to invite me tonight. (laughter) [00:12:00] As one should never apologize for remarks, but you should all know that I went to bed at 2:00 in the morning last night in Moscow, and I woke up at 5:30 this morning to come here.
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