Elizabeth Herridge, managing director of the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, found herself in something of pickle around this time last year. She was counting on the museum's lending partner, the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna, to lend some of its ancient Egyptian collection for a show to open this past spring, but it became obvious, she says, that this was not going to happen. Plan B turned out to be The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt, an exhibition organized by United Exhibits Group of Copenhagen that had been touring the nation since 2002. It closed at the end of July at the Guggenheim Hermitage.
Quest proved to be an admirable stopgap, but local gallery-goers had to wonder if it signaled trouble for the Las Vegas outpost of the Guggenheim empire. It was the sixth consecutive show in the steel-walled space, which opened in 2001. But the Guggenheim Hermitage had nothing scheduled after it—art museums generally schedule exhibitions years in advance—and it had already seen its larger sibling, the Guggenheim Las Vegas, close after one show in 2003. Thomas Krens, the audacious Guggenheim Foundation director, had just survived a bruising battle with his board president over Krens' expansionist agenda, but he was not on hand for the Quest media preview, a first.
But Krens will be in town next month for the opening of the GHM's next show, and he won't be alone. As Herridge puts it: "The Russians are coming."
More to the point, Russia! is coming. Russia! The Majesty of the Tsars: Treasures from the Kremlin Museum opens Sept. 1 at the Guggenheim Hermitage. Herridge says Mikhail Piatrovsky, director of the State Hermitage Museum, will join Krens and new Guggenheim board chairman William Mack for the opening festivities in mid-September.
Russia! is an adjunct of sorts to an exhibition of that title opening Sept. 16 at the Guggenheim's flagship museum in New York, and both represent another ambitious Krens project, bringing hundreds of artworks and artifacts from Russia to the U.S., under the patronage of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Guggenheim Hermitage installation comprises 16th- and 17th-century works from the Armory Chamber of the Kremlin Museum. Herridge says the Las Vegas show was Krens' idea, and it wasn't a mere afterthought. "I think it's absolutely designed just for this venue," says Herridge.
Perhaps more important, Herridge says four more shows are in the works for the Rem Koolhaas-designed museum at the Venetian. Nothing is definitively scheduled, but Herridge says the next exhibition should bring a selection of paintings by Peter Paul Rubens from the Hermitage to Las Vegas. Another show would consist of paintings of Venice, appropriately enough.
Herridge says she has been "out prospecting," with some success, for local corporate support, although so far she's been unsuccessful securing corporate sponsors for exhibitions, which is a crucial component of art-museum success. But she notes that the Las Vegas Sands Corp., parent company of the Venetian, has given the Guggenheim Hermitage a seven-year, rent-free lease, and has included plans for another Guggenheim Hermitage in its bid to build a casino in Singapore.
We should know about the success of that bid by the end of the year, but Herridge has no doubt about local prospects.
The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum will be in Las Vegas, she says, "for a long time. A long time."