Thomas Krens has influential friends. No, not Dennis Hopper, although the actor accompanied the Guggenheim Foundation director to Las Vegas for the opening of A Century of Painting: From Renoir to Rothko at the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum last week. And for some golf.
Kren's friends are Van Gogh, Picasso and Kandinsky, ever ready to put up their considerable dukes for him. Say what you will about Kren's ambitious empire-building and he summons up Manet, Monet and Matisse. It's hard to argue with them, even if you've heard from some of them before.
Renoir, for instance, has already made his case in "Woman with Parrot" (1871); Matisse his with "The Italian Woman" (1916); and Fernand Léger with "Woman Holding a Vase" (1927). All three paintings have been shown at the Venetian-based GH.
You can't blame Curator Tracey Bashkoff, who was asked to summarize a century in fewer than 40 paintings. She's well aware, for instance, that the show's 100 years, from the aforementioned Renoir to Robert Motherwell's "Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 11" (1971) almost entirely elides surrealism.
Bashkoff says she tried "to get the essence of a movement in one or two canvases," and for the most part she did, skimming along from impressionism to abstract expressionism. Still, the show has a place-holding feel, keeping the gallery warm for a likely winner. Next up is a Vegas-suited show, The Pursuit of Pleasure, drawing on the collections of the Guggenheim and its partner, St. Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum.
Krens didn't help matters by strolling into the opening press conference wearing a golf glove and announcing that getting in a round is one of the pleasures of keeping a museum in Vegas. But he proclaimed that "we see this as a serious educational institution," with a duty to locals. "I believe we're here for the long-term," said Krens, declaring himself "stubborn about wanting to make this work."
Work it must. Gone are dreams of Vegas bucks floating the fleet; the GH must pay its way. It's hired Elizabeth Herridge, formerly of Bear Stearns, as managing director. "I don't see how we can survive if we don't have the support of the community," says Herridge. The Contact program, which has brought 4,000 local schoolkids to the museum, is part of the effort, as is the plan to open the museum free to Nevadans after 5 p.m., Thursdays.
But free admission won't pay the bills. The GH must find local patrons, a challenge for a New York institution lodged in a swanky casino-resort. Krens recounted how he got the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice flourishing with a broad-based advisory board, and seemed to find it a novel idea when asked if one were in order here.
Krens' friends will help again. However prosy, A Century of Painting has some spectacular work, from Monet's appropriately Venetian "Palazzo Ducal" (1908) to Picasso's splendid "Woman with Yellow Hair" (1931). Only familiars of this caliber will draw locals and local dollars.
Maybe Hopper could chair the advisory board.
Chuck Twardy has written about art and architecture for several daily newspapers and for magazines such as Metropolis.