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GUGGENHEIM FOUNDATION TO ESTABLISH COLLABORATION WITH ELSEWHERE ARTISTS COLLABORATIVE
MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING TO ESTABLISH GREENSBORO AS GLOBAL CULTURAL DESTINATION
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Greensboro, North Carolina: Tuesday, August 7, 2007.
Greensboro, located in the Piedmont area of North Carolina, today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the New York-based Guggenheim Foundation to establish a world-class collaborative effort devoted to exploring the relationship between working artists and art museums. To be called the Guggenheim Elsewhere, the collaboration will position Greensboro as a leading international cultural destination.
At 30,000 square feet, the Greensboro collaboration will be the only Guggenheim museum in the region. Along with the new Guggenheim Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates expected to open in 2009, this collaboration will expand the Guggenheim Foundation’s presence into new geographic areas.
The collaborative effort with Elsewhere Artists’ Collaborative will create its own major collection of contemporary art, and will allow Guggenheim curators a first-hand look at emerging installation artists. The museum will be housed in the current Elsewhere space on South Elm Street, using the existing Elsewhere resources to advance a global international presence.
“Today’s signing represents the determination of Elsewhere Artist’s Collaborative to create a world-class cultural destination for the residents and visitors of North Carolina,” said George Scheer, Co-Director of Elsewhere. “It also demonstrates the commitment of the artists and staff of our Collaborative, to demonstrably establish this organization as a quality destination of international standing, one capable of achieving and maintaining relationships with the very highest caliber of global partners.”
Stephanie Sherman, Co-Director, states, “This is a major step forward in our plans for Greensboro and its Cultural District which will become an international cultural hub for the Southeast, on par with the best in the world. The signing also represents a significant development in the creation and nurturing of cultural and artistic ties, which we believe will do much to forge greater understanding of the installation artist’s process and methodology.”
Thomas Krens, Director of the Guggenheim Foundation, said the signing reflects the visionary spirit and forward-looking approach that are the Guggenheim’s hallmarks.
“Our commitment to national communication and artistic cultural exchange - realized through our museums, collections, collaborations, and programs - is inclusive. The Guggenheim implicitly regards all contemporary artists and their practices as potential partners in the field of aesthetic discourse - we are both respectful of difference and excited by it.
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“In Greensboro,” Krens continued, “we have had the good fortune to discover a partner that not only shares our point of view, but expands upon it. The plans for Elsewhere Artists’ Collaborative and the Guggenheim interchange are, quite simply, extraordinary. When this comprehensive and inclusive vision is realized, it will set a standard for global culture that will resonate for decades to come.”
William Mack, Chairman of the Guggenheim Foundation, led a delegation of Guggenheim trustees to Elsewhere for the project launch. He said: “It is with a keen sense of historical precedent and with an abiding commitment to cultural exchange as a bridge to national understanding that the Guggenheim Foundation enters into this agreement to establish a Guggenheim collaborative at Elsewhere.
“I congratulate George and Stephanie for their foresight in the redevelopment of Elsewhere and for its realization that art and culture have a central role to play in enhancing museum/collaborative relations and understanding, and in encouraging greater educational initiatives locally, regionally and internationally.”
According to the MOU, Elsewhere Artist’s Collaborative (EAC), which manages the assets of Elsewhere, will run the collaboration. The Guggenheim Foundation will establish and manage the collaboration’s program, which will include artist residencies, exhibitions and educational initiatives.
The MOU was signed on behalf of Elsewhere by George Scheer and Stephanie Sherman, Co-Directors of Elsewhere Artist Collaborative, Artist-in-Residence Carolyn Porter, and Thomas Krens.
“Elsewhere’s collaboration will join a highly exclusive Guggenheim museum network which currently includes New York, Venice in Italy, Bilbao in Spain, Berlin in Germany, Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, and Las Vegas,” said Thomas Krens. “The MOU is testimony to Elsewhere’s ambition to become a destination and to ensure that the Elsewhere name resonates worldwide.”
Historically, Elsewhere and the Guggenheim Foundation have retained a connection through the lifelong friendship of Peggy Guggenheim and Sylvia Gray, Elsewhere’s founder. The two met in Paris, and maintained a correspondence that shared their interest in object collecting. The correspondence archives are housed at Elsewhere, and function as a historical cornerstone of future collaborative efforts.
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Artist development and collaboration will be a hallmark of the new initiative. To this end, the Guggenheim Foundation is sponsoring the residency of artist Carolyn Porter, of the University of Texas at Austin, to kick off this new relationship. “Porter’s work explores the relationship of art and museums,” says Krens. “She has an understanding of our joint missions, and her activity at Elsewhere serves as a beta test for future artist-in-residence dialogues with the Guggenheim.” The power of the arts to attract an international audience is borne out by the fact that with its global locations, the Guggenheim has seen its worldwide attendance triple over the past 15 years. It now welcomes more than 2.5 million visitors annually, making it one of the world’s most visited museums.”
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About Elsewhere Artist Collaborative:
In 1939, Joe and Sylvia Gray began selling furniture imports at 606 and 608 South Elm Street in downtown Greensboro, NC. Following WWII, the furniture business transformed into a Surplus Store and catalog company, mending used army goods and selling them to Boy Scout troops across the country. After Joe’s unexpected death in 1955, Sylvia began to stock surplus fabric, clothing, and eventually general thrift items such as toys, books, house wares, and knick-knacks. Shopping daily, Sylvia’s collection increasingly became an unmanageable mass stored in boxes and piles throughout the three-story building. The astounding accumulation amassed over her lifetime remained in a seemingly chaotic heap after Sylvia’s death in 1997.
Inspired by the potential for these “found objects” as artistic resource, George Scheer (Sylvia’s grandson) recruited fellow artists and friends to begin excavating Sylvia’s old store in May 2003. As the reorganization of Sylvia’s collection took form, local support increased, and the artist-residency program expanded, a living museum created by a collaborating community of artists flourished. It is at this time that the correspondence between Sylvia Grey and Peggy Guggenheim was discovered; Scheer worked closely with Guggenheim librarians and archivists to authenticate the correspondence collection.
Almost daily, Elsewherians discover new objects that reflect Sylvia’s fascinating mind and life, and whose placement and preservation reference the eccentric process by which the objects of her collection were ordered. Hidden within this mass of objects lies a historical narrative about the depression’s effect on notions of possession and ownership, an economic narrative about overproduction and waste, and a cultural narrative written in attics and basements across the country.
Elsewhere layers these complex and variable histories: the mythic story of Sylvia imagined from her extraordinary collection and the continual creation story of an art production space and museum.
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About The Guggenheim Foundation:
Founded in 1937, The Guggenheim Foundation has the most international outlook of all New York City’s great cultural institutions. The foundation’s mandate is to preserve art and educate the public, and, over the past seven decades, it has amassed a premier collection of modern and contemporary art.
The Guggenheim Foundation currently owns and operates three museums: the Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue, New York City; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection on the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy; and the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas.
The foundation also provides programming and management for two other museums in Europe that bear its name, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and the Deutsche Guggenheim, in Berlin. Through a unique alliance agreement, the Guggenheim Foundation shares its collections and collaborates on programming with the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Kunshistorisches Museum in Vienna.
About Greensboro, North Carolina:
Greensboro, North Carolina is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the largest city in Guilford County and the largest in the Piedmont Triad region.
As of the 2000 census, the city population was 223,891, making it the third most populous city in North Carolina. Its estimated 2006 population is 240,955. It is located at the intersection of two major interstate highways (I-85 and I-40) in the Piedmont ("foot of the mountains") region in central North Carolina.
The city is home to several universities and colleges. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NCA&T), Guilford College, Bennett College, Greensboro College, and Elon University School of Law all call Greensboro home. In addition, the state community college system has several campuses for Guilford Technical Community College.
The city is the home of the Greensboro Grasshoppers baseball club of the South Atlantic League and the Carolina Dynamo of the USL Premier Development League. The Wyndham Championship, one of the oldest national PGA Tour golf events, is held annually in Greensboro at Forest Oaks Country Club.
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For further information in the USA: Carolyn Porter,
Artist-in-Residence, Guggenheim Elsewhere
Tel: 512/565/5132
Email: carolynp@mail.utexas.edu
Or visit Elsewhere Online at: www.elsewhereelsewhere.org
Here are some construction photos from the Guggenheim Elsewhere front window....
