Guggenheim Foundation and BMW Group announce new global initiative

NEW YORK – Richard Armstrong, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Museum, and Frank-Peter Arndt, Member of the Board of Management, BMW AG, today announced a long-term collaboration that will span six years of program activities, engage people in major cities around the globe, and inspire the creation of forward-looking concepts and designs for urban life. The initiative will engage a new generation of leaders in architecture, art, science, design, technology, and education, who will address the challenges of the cities of tomorrow by examining the realities of the cities of today.

An innovative movable structure that travels from city to city, the BMW Guggenheim Lab will bring together ambitious thinkers from around the globe and will be a public place for sharing ideas and practical solutions to major issues affecting urban life. There will be three different BMW Guggenheim Labs, each with its own architect, graphic designer, and theme and each traveling to three major cities worldwide. The BMW Guggenheim Labs will travel in separate, consecutive two-year cycles, for a total project period of six years.

Site-specific events and educational programs related to the cycle’s theme will include workshops, public discussions, performances, and formal and informal gatherings, which will tie the BMW Guggenheim Lab into the everyday fabric of the city. The BMW Guggenheim Lab will also present the responses of a multidisciplinary team of professionals assembled to study the theme.

The first BMW Guggenheim Lab will be installed in North America in late summer 2011 and will present programming into the fall of 2011, before moving on to the next two cities on its global tour, in Europe and Asia, respectively. At the conclusion of each three-city cycle, a special exhibition will be presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, exploring important issues that were raised, addressed, and presented at the BMW Guggenheim Lab’s different venues.

The theme for the inaugural BMW Guggenheim Lab will be Confronting Comfort: The City and You—how urban environments can be made more responsive to people’s needs, how people can feel at ease in an urban environment, and how to find a balance between notions of modern comfort and the urgent need for environmental responsibility and sustainability.

"Our collaboration with BMW brings together three kinds of expertise—an international museum, international design firms, and emerging talents from a number of different fields—for a research-and-development project with almost limitless potential," stated Richard Armstrong. "We cannot predict, and do not want to predict, the outcomes of this open-ended experiment. We do know that it may change every city and community it touches, and point the way toward new possibilities for the urban environment worldwide. We are grateful to BMW for their collaboration on this adventurous project and greatly respect the company’s long-standing commitment to design, architecture, and the arts."

"For almost 40 years now, the BMW Group has initiated and engaged in many international cultural cooperations. To us, sustainable commitment in the cultural sector is being aware of our social responsibility whilst preserving absolute creative freedom for our partners," stated Frank-Peter Arndt. "As a company, we are extremely interested in an open-minded and productive dialogue with numerous representatives from art and science. For this reason, we also regard the joint initiative of the BMW Guggenheim Lab as an exciting global platform."

Dr. Uwe Ellinghaus, Director Brand Management BMW, stated, "With the BMW Guggenheim Lab, BMW is significantly broadening its international cultural commitment. We are very proud to cooperate over a longer period of time with a renowned institution such as the Guggenheim. With the knowledge that the challenges of the future can only be tackled together, we look forward to the open, multidisciplinary exchange this project makes possible worldwide."

Launching the BMW Guggenheim Lab

The pioneering Tokyo-based architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow has been commissioned to design the first BMW Guggenheim Lab, and the Seoul-based firm of Sulki & Min has been announced as the designer of its graphic identity. The firms were selected for their intelligent designs, and for their ability to tackle complex issues with wit and an open mind.

The 5,000-square-foot structure will open at its North American venue in late summer 2011 and host a rich roster of public programming through the fall of 2011. Following this inaugural presentation, the BMW Guggenheim Lab will be dismantled in preparation for installation at the next city on its itinerary.

"Our thinking has always been informed by a sense of wonder at the sometimes surprising ways in which people create spaces that work for them, even within urban situations that look unpromising,” stated Yoshiharu Tsukamoto of Atelier Bow-Wow. “We are grateful, and extremely excited, to have been chosen to participate in the BMW Guggenheim Lab to carry forward these urban investigations into comfort, a theme that is so integral to our own ideas and concerns.”

According to Sulki Choi and Min Choi of Sulki & Min, "We thank the BMW Guggenheim Lab for giving us one of the most productive challenges we have yet encountered as graphic designers. The purpose of the BMW Guggenheim Lab is clear and singular. The expressions of the purpose over the next six years will be multiple and in almost constant flux. Our goal is to give this project a graphic identity that is strong, responsive, and playful."

In each city, the programs, events, and ideas for the BMW Guggenheim Lab will be developed collaboratively by a different four-member, multidisciplinary BMW Guggenheim Lab Team of early- to mid-career professionals who have been identified as emerging leaders in their fields. The BMW Guggenheim Lab Team members will be nominated by a distinguished Advisory Committee, composed of internationally renowned experts from the creative, academic, and scientific fields, and will work closely with Guggenheim staff to develop the program.

Further details about the project, including the unveiling of the BMW Guggenheim Lab design, the announcement of the cities on the tour, the identification of Advisory Committee and BMW Guggenheim Lab Team members, and programming information will be revealed over the next several months.

The BMW Guggenheim Lab is curated by David van der Leer, Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design, and Maria Nicanor, Assistant Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

David van der Leer stated, "It is more and more essential for museums to bring their architecture and design programming out of the confines of the gallery’s white box and into the realities of everyday urban life. The BMW Guggenheim Lab allows us to zoom out from the design fields to a more expansive, post-disciplinary view of the city, and then back in again on the problems, challenges, and chances offered by urban landscapes around the world."

Maria Nicanor stated, "The BMW Guggenheim Lab is an invaluable opportunity to bring together local communities with international experts and young talents from a wide variety of fields in order to redefine how we want to live in urban environments today and tomorrow. By establishing a close connection with the neighborhoods it temporarily inhabits, the BMW Guggenheim Lab will become an open place for experimentation and change; for questions and ideas to flourish; for dialogue, and, we hope, for action."

About Atelier Bow-Wow

Atelier Bow-Wow, architect for the inaugural BMW Guggenheim Lab, was established in Tokyo in 1992 by the husband-and-wife team of Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima. Best known for its surprising, idiosyncratic, yet highly usable residential projects in dense urban environments, the firm has developed its practice based on a profound and unprejudiced study of existing cultural, economic, and environmental conditions—a study that led it to propose the term "pet architecture" for the multitude of odd, ungainly, but functional little buildings wedged into tiny sites around Tokyo. Atelier Bow-Wow has also acquired an enthusiastic following through its innovative projects at exhibitions, including the 2010 Venice Biennale (as an official representative of Japan) and the São Paulo Bienal, and at venues such as the Hayward in London, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, The Gallery at REDCAT in Los Angeles, the Japan Society in New York, and the OK Offenes Kulturhaus Oberösterreich in Linz, Austria. More information about Atelier Bow-Wow can be found at bow-wow.jp.

About Sulki & Min

Sulki & Min, graphic designer for the inaugural BMW Guggenheim Lab, is a partnership established in Seoul by Sulki Choi and Min Choi, who met as MFA students at Yale University in 2001. From 2003 until 2005 they were based at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, the Netherlands, where they participated in a research project for the cultural identity of the city of Leuven, Belgium; designed the academy’s various publications and promotional materials; and, with Tamara Maletic and Dan Michaelson, designed the exhibition Welcome to Fusedspace Database at Stroom Den Haag. Their first solo exhibition, Sulki & Min: Factory 060421-060513, was presented at Gallery Factory, Seoul, in 2006, and received the 2006 Art Award of the Year from the Arts Council Korea. Their second solo exhibition, Sulki & Min: Kimjinhye 080402-080414, was held at Kimjinhye Gallery, Seoul, in 2008. More information about Sulki & Min can be found at sulki-min.com.

About the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Founded in 1937, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is dedicated to promoting the understanding and appreciation of art, architecture, and other manifestations of visual culture, primarily of the modern and contemporary periods, and to collecting, conserving, and studying the art of our time. The Foundation realizes this mission through exceptional exhibitions, education programs, research initiatives, and publications, and strives to engage and educate an increasingly diverse international audience through its unique network of museums and cultural partnerships. Currently the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation owns and operates the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue in New York and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection on the Grand Canal in Venice, and provides programming and management for two museums in Europe that bear its name: the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin. The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, a museum of modern and contemporary art designed by architect Frank Gehry, is scheduled to open in 2013. More information about the Foundation can be found at guggenheim.org.

About BMW’s Cultural Commitment

BMW’s cultural program is involved in more than 100 projects worldwide and has been a key element of corporate communications for almost 40 years. This cultural engagement focuses on contemporary and modern art as well as classical music, jazz, architecture, and design. The BMW Group has also been ranked industry leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes for the last six years. In 1972 three large-scale paintings by Gerhard Richter were created specifically for the foyer of the BMW Group’s Munich headquarters. Since then artists ranging from Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein to Olafur Eliasson, Thomas Demand, and Jeff Koons have collaborated with BMW. Moreover, the company has commissioned renowned architects such as Karl Schwanzer, Zaha Hadid, and Coop Himmelblau for the construction of its central buildings and plants. The company guarantees absolute creative freedom in all the cultural activities it is involved in—as this is just as essential for groundbreaking artistic work as it is for major innovations in a successful business. More information about BMW’s cultural commitment can be found at bmwgroup.com/culture.

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Early machines eased the drudgery of washday

Yet the guys also lingered at Faye Gordon's display at a cabin tucked away at Olmstead Place State Park last weekend where the show took place.

Longtime Kittitas Valley resident Chriss Peterson on Saturday slowly walked up to the exhibit of old washers and chuckled and smiled at his memories.

“I remember that one, oh, boy, do I remember that one,” Peterson, 91, said pointing at the wooden, hand-cranked tub in Gordon's collection. Peterson said he came to Kittitas County in 1940 as a young man, but before that, back in Oklahoma, it was the four boys, not the four girls in his family who took turns pulling the crank for Mom on washday.

The crank turned the round agitator inside the washtub.

“As I remember it, it was a hundred strokes for the boys' clothes, and we could get by with 50 pulls for the girls' clothes,'' Peterson said with a laugh.

“You see, the girls’ clothes weren’t so dirty.”

And what did the girls do?

“Well, they did all the ironing.”

Gordon smiled at that memory, and later said her collection has been a feature at the annual threshing bee for more than five years.

“That's what's so fascinating: The older people always seem to have a story, something they remember about an old machine,” Gordon, 53, said.

Faye's husband, Brian Gordon, is president of the Kittitas Valley Early Iron Club, which annually sponsors the show that displays old tractors and farm equipment, antique engines and implements of yesteryear.

“I've always gone to the shows, and I just saw a lack of things that might interest the ladies,” Faye said. “So, washing machines seemed a good choice.”

She now has nine antique machines, from handmade, wooden models that were used in the late 1800s to before 1915, to the “modern era” of electric and gasoline-powered Maytag machines stretching from about 1905 to the early 1920s.

Her “latest” machine is from the early 1950s with a porcelain tub.

“A lot of those same older people who remember those washers with the wringers on top to squeeze the water out, they also tell stories of people getting caught in the wringer, their hair or a sleeve or even fingers and hands and arms,” Faye said.

And the old-time term of “getting caught in the wringer” or variations of being “put through the wringer” were born: it indicates experiencing circumstances which are exerting pressure and stress on people.

Faye and Brian keep their eyes open for estate sales and visit far-flung antique stores and old farm equipment shops during their travels.

The crowning glory of her collection is a shining copper tub machine with an electric motor to spin the tub and work agitators.

The machine is a 1905 Laun-Dry-Ette model. The Gordons found it driving down a residential road in Troy, Mont.

“There it was in the backyard of someone running a flower business of some kind,” Faye said. “We stopped and asked if they wanted to get rid of it. They did, for a price.

Many people, Faye said, turn antique washing machines, with their outside round tubs, into huge, outdoor flower pots.

But not Lee Maxwell of Eaton, Colo. He owns and operates the national Washing Machine Museum and has more than 1,000 antique machines and vast amounts of information about them.

Faye said Maxwell was helpful in providing information about her machines and sending her color photos of restored models.

“He wants to share what he knows, and he really wants to do what he can to assist any other collectors,” Faye said.

Her husband has a number of old antique tractors, and Faye said she does have one herself.

Yet the old washing machines hold an attraction all their own.

“It's a coming together of American mechanical ingenuity, the availability of electricity and wanting to make household chores easier,” Faye said. “The demand for it came, I think, also because women just got to the point where they wanted more time in their lives for doing other things besides laundry all day.”

As for the younger women looking at the machines, Faye said they are in awe of all the work it took to do laundry and an appreciation for what's available now.

Faye said her fascination has continued through the years with all the variation of mechanical devices put forth to clean clothes.

“In the end, it's way better than the washboard and the open tub and doing it by hand,” Faye said.

And, yes, she does have an old-time washboard hanging in display on the wall behind the machines.

No one asks about that model.

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Information from: Daily Record, http://www.kvnews.com

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WS-09-21-10 0926EDT

Vatican library reopens after 3-year restoration

The library, started by Pope Nicholas V in the 1450s, houses one of the world's best collections of illuminated manuscripts. It includes the oldest known complete Bible, dating from about 325 and believed to have been one of the 50 bibles commissioned by Emperor Constantine, the first Christian Roman leader.

It reopens its frescoed halls to scholars Sept. 20. Library officials took pains to note that the renovation work was completed on time – a rarity in Italy but also an acknowledgment of the inconvenience the three-year closure caused many scholars who had to suspend their research while its collections of tens of thousands of volumes were in storage.

Cardinal Raffaele Farina, the Vatican's chief librarian, thanked those researchers “who understood the reason for the closure.”

“Given the amount of what had to be done – the noise and the intrusiveness of the technical and construction work necessary – we decided the library inevitably had to close,” Farina told reporters Monday inside the frescoed Sistine Hall.

Some 4,000 to 5,000 scholars are given permission to conduct research in the library every year; access is generally restricted to academics conducting postgraduate level research. None of the items in the library can be checked out, and rules for working inside are strict: No pens, food or even mineral water are allowed in the manuscript reading room.

Researchers will now find improved communications and elevator access to the Vatican's vast collections, as well as a new tower inside the Vatican's Belvedere Courtyard to ferry manuscripts from their bombproof bunker to climate-controlled consultation rooms. Inside the bunker itself, fireproof and dust-proof floors and walls were installed to further protect the manuscripts.

The library's 70,000 books have been outfitted with computer chips to prevent loss and theft, closed-circuit cameras have been installed and new automated entry and exit gates keep tabs on who is coming in and going out.

The security measures stem in part from an incident in which an Ohio State University art history professor, Anthony Melnikas, smuggled pages torn from a 14th-century Vatican manuscript that once belonged to Petrarch. He was sentenced in 1996 to 14 months in prison after admitting he took the pages during a research visit in 1987.

The library was started by Pope Nicholas V with an initial 350 Latin manuscripts. By the time Nicholas died in 1455, the collection had swelled to about 1,500 codices and was the largest in Europe.

Today, the Vatican Library has about 150,000 volumes of manuscripts as well as the Codex B – the oldest known complete Bible.

During a presentation and tour of the library Monday, officials showed off a replica of the illuminated Urbino Bible, produced for the Duke of Urbino in 1476-78 by David and Dominico Ghirlandaio and others. The bible, one of the finest works of art in the 15th century, is said to contain over a kilo of gold in its illustrated pages.

Italian cement company Italcement paid a hefty chunk of renovation price tag while savings and private donations funded the rest, Farina said.

The Apostolic Library is next door to the Vatican's Secret Archives, which contain centuries of Vatican diplomatic correspondence and papal documentation. Citing frequent Dan Brown-inspired confusion, officials stressed Monday that the collections and institutions are different.

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Online: www.vaticanlibrary.va

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-ES-09-13-10 1020EDT

Bidding war erupts for 105-year-old Maine lighthouse

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - Two bidders who helped drive up the online auction price of a 105-year-old, picturesque lighthouse have resolved their bidding war with a flip of a coin.

Portland real estate developer Arthur Girard and Dr. Jeffrey Florman, a neurosurgeon from Windham, flipped a coin Friday to determine which one of them would drop out of the bidding for the Ram Island Ledge Lighthouse, a 72-foot working light tower that is being auctioned by the federal government, said Girard's business assistant, Beth Bernard.

Florman won the flip when the quarter turned up heads in the Maine Medical Center parking lot. He promptly put in a bid for $180,000. As the loser, Girard agreed to bow out of the bidding.

"They shook hands, and Art told Dr. Florman to use it in good health,'' Bernard said. "Dr. Florman told him, 'If I am the successful bidder, you'll be my first guest to the island.' Art feels like he lost the lighthouse but gained a friend.''

The coin flip didn't determine who will own the lighthouse, but it removed one of the active bidders from the auction, which is now scheduled to end Monday afternoon. There's still an anonymous bidder with an online name of ``tugdocto'' whose previous high bid was $160,000 and whose intentions are unknown.

Florman could not be reached for comment.

Ram Island Ledge Lighthouse was built in 1905 near the entrance to Portland Harbor. Before being automated in 1959, it was manned by lighthouse keepers who lived in isolation and used kerosene lamps and foghorns to assist mariners.

The U.S. General Services Administration is now selling it. Whoever buys it will have to maintain its historical integrity while the Coast Guard continues to operate it as a navigational aid with a flashing light and a foghorn that blares every 10 seconds.

The bidding began at $10,000 on July 9. A second bid, of $15,000, was entered on Aug. 17.

But there have been 30 bids in the past seven days, driving the price up to the current bid of $180,000. The last 21 bids - from $80,000 on up - have been made by Girard, Florman and "tugdocto.''

Girard and Florman met Thursday night after learning that they were two of the bidders. They quickly realized they had the same goals of keeping the lighthouse in the hands of a Maine owner and making sure it's preserved, Bernard said.

Rather than continue bidding against each other, Girard suggested they flip a coin to decide who would continue bidding and who would drop out.

Nobody else had entered a higher bid by late Friday afternoon.

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Online: http://tinyurl.com/2w94d99

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-ES-09-10-10 1547EDT