Na integra o artigo da Ms. Rosenbaum do Wall Street Journal gozando os planos de expanção do Guggenheim:
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Perpetual Motion: Where Next for the Guggenheim?

In the Fray
By LEE ROSENBAUM

Last month, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation announced plans for the Guggenheim Museum Rio de Janeiro, to be designed by French architect Jean Nouvel. The 240,000-square-foot museum will include a 115-foot waterfall in a tropical rain forest with Brazilian flora and fauna, and a glass-ceilinged entrance hall with underwater views of a reflecting pool. Its cost is variously estimated to be $130 million (according to Cesar Maia, Rio's mayor) and $250 million (according to Thomas Krens, the Guggenheim's director). As with its satellite museum in Bilbao, Spain, the Guggenheim will receive a multimillion-dollar fee from the host city for the use of its name. It will also be paid a $4.18 million fee from Rio during the museum's development phase.

On Friday, just nine days after that announcement, the president of the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas revealed that it was permanently shutting down the larger of its two Guggenheim spaces, which may be converted into a theater.

Ever resilient, Mr. Krens is already seeking new continents to conquer. Next stop -- Taichung in Taiwan, where a feasibility study is already under way. And there is more to come. A disgruntled former employee, laid off during the 43% staff reduction caused by the museum's post-9/11 budget shortfall, has provided The Wall Street Journal with the secret draft of a press release announcing yet another projected branch:

NEW YORK -- June 1, 2010 -- Today Thomas Krens, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, announced plans for the Guggenheim Museum Antarctica. Embedded in the Earth's southern ice cap, the museum will feature an enclosed Vaseline-slicked skating rink, conceived by Matthew Barney, hailed by the New York Times, in a review of his 2003 Guggenheim exhibition, "The Cremaster Cycle," as "[H]ands down . . . the most compelling, richly imaginative artist to emerge in years." Another amenity will be "Torqued Bobsled Run," designed by Minimalist sculptor Richard Serra and fabricated in his trademark material of massive sheets of steel. Two ice-walled galleries will display the last 10 artworks from the permanent collection of the Guggenheim, the rest having been gradually sold off to cover debt service and other costs associated with the museum's 18-year expansion program.

Despite skating on thin ice financially, the far-flung art museum still sees worlds left to conquer.

"We cannot be a truly Global Guggenheim until we have a foothold on each continent," observed Mr. Krens at last week's Guggenheim Summit in New York, attended by the directors of the Guggenheims Venice, Berlin, Bilbao, Rio, Taichung, Nairobi and Perth. "When our final Guggenheim on this planet opens in 2015 at the North Pole, we will at last have accomplished our goal of being not only global but bipolar."

In keeping with the Guggenheim's practice of using eye-catching architecture to distract from the uneven programming within, Mr. Krens announced that the Guggenheim Antarctica will be designed by the husband-and-wife team of Diller + Scofidio, best known for their 2002 Swiss Expo "Blur Building," so named because it is shrouded in a fog of mist sprayed from nozzles on its exterior. Their new museum, to be known as the "Brrrr Building," will be in the shape of a dogsled. Because its chief material will be ice, it will be the least expensive construction project so far, in line with the comparatively low attendance projected for this challenging climate. "Cost containment is essential because, unlike other international venues, Antarctica has no one willing to pay us tens of millions of dollars for use of the Guggenheim name," said Mr. Krens. "There are only penguins there."

The 10 paintings of the Antarctic Collection will be supplemented by art from the Guggenheim's new partner, the Saatchi Gallery of London. It will lend new work by Chris Ofili and Damien Hirst, among other MABAs (Middle-Aged British Artists), for an inaugural exhibition titled "Insensate." This will be followed by "The Art of the Snowmobile," a sequel to the museum's acclaimed high-octane cultural event of the 1990s, "The Art of the Motorcycle." This dynamic museum will be always in motion, thanks to the constant shifting of polar floes.

Mr. Krens commented that "the plans for the new museum are part of a tundra development plan that will anchor the rehabilitation of Antarctica and bring new jobs and new visitors, much as Frank Gehry's museum transformed Bilbao. This will be global warming in the best sense," he said. "It also continues our policy of diverting attention from our financial and management difficulties in New York by expanding abroad."

"The Guggenheim Antarctica will surely be a museum for the new millennium and beyond," Mr. Krens commented. "Speaking of beyond," he added, "we have already started our next feasibility study. It is for a location we are not yet prepared to disclose. But let me say that if realized, it will represent one small step for the Guggenheim, one giant leap for mankind."

Ms. Rosenbaum is a contributing editor of Art in America magazine.

Updated May 13, 2003 9:47 a.m.

A nova do O Globo é dar na cabeça de empresas que mencionam a violência descontrolada do Rio. Primeiro com a reportagem sobre o anúncio de um hotel de Búzios que mostrava a foto de um ônibus incendiado, cena que está se tornando um cartão postal da cidade maravilhosa. Agora a reportagem de primeira página entitulada 'Banco Exporta Medo da Violência', que comenta sobre um email do Citigroup pros seus mais de 200.000 funcionários sugerindo o uso do Santos Dumond, entre outras coisas.

Essa reação do O Bobo é no mínimo bizarra. Notícias da violência carioca têm saido nos maiores jornais do mundo. Semana passada mesmo havia um artigo de primeira página no Wall Street Journal sobre o extermínio de bandidos na favela Rio das Pedras. A circulação diária daquele jornal é de quase dois milhões de cópias. Havia também semana passada longas reportagens sobre a violência carioca no New York Times (circulação um pouco acima de um milhão) e na revista The Economist (circulação de 880.000).

O que deveria ser destaque de primeira página no O Bobo é a reação do prefeito do Rio, Cesar Maia, ao email do Citigroup:
"É uma enorme besteira, até porque, em quantidade, ocorrem menos problemas na Linha Vermelha do que na Avenida Paulista. Poderiam chamar a atenção na mensagem para o fato de que os problemas na Linha Vermelha não são assaltos a motoristas."

Dá pra acreditar? Já imaginou o Citigroup dizendo no email: "By the way, don't worry too much about the Red Line Highway in Rio because its biggest problem isn't robbery, like in Avenida Paulista, but rather the daily exchange of machinegun fire between the police and drug lords. And in case you are wondering, these are not submachineguns using handgun calibers; no, these are the real thing and they fire the .223, the .308 and the 7.62x39. Thus don't bother about renting an armored car. Just relax and enjoy your trip!" Essa figura é a mesma que quer gastar milhões num novo museu de arte pro Rio, uma cidade que, tirando a violência, tem do melhor pra atrair turistas.