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GUGGENHEIM HERMITAGE MUSEUM OPENS IN LAS VEGAS WITH THE EXHIBITION MASTERPIECES AND MASTER COLLECTORS

05/10/2001

October 05, 2001
Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings from the Hermitage and Guggenheim Museums on Display in New OMA/Rem Koolhaas-Designed Building

(Las Vegas, NV - Oct 05, 2001) The new Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas was unveiled today at a dedication ceremony and press conference attended by Dr. Mikhail Shwydkoi, Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation; Dr. Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director, the State Hermitage Museum; Peter B. Lewis, Chairman of the Board, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, and Thomas Krens, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Sheldon Adelson, Chairman, Las Vegas Sands, Inc., and Rob Goldstein, President, The Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino. The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum officially opens to the public on October 7, 2001, with the inaugural exhibition Masterpieces and Master Collectors: Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings from the Hermitage and Guggenheim Museums, a selection of 45 key works that highlights the distinct but highly complementary strengths of these two world-renowned collections.

The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum is the most substantial project to date resulting from a larger long-term collaboration agreement between The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York that was announced last year. The cooperation agreement was strongly endorsed by Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, and Mikhail Shwydkoi, Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation, who spoke at today's press conference. Although President Putin was unable to attend, at the time the collaboration was announced he praised the unique and innovative character of the project, saying, “The significance of the Hermitage Guggenheim Museum is exceptional for Russian-American cultural relations. At this moment in history, efforts to bridge cultural and national borders are essential to fostering greater international understanding. We are proud to be part of these important initiatives.”

Thomas Krens, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, said that the opening of this new facility is significant for several reasons. “The Hermitage Guggenheim Museum—or the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum as it is also known—is the most prominent evidence to date of the far-reaching partnership between the Guggenheim and Hermitage that was launched in St. Petersburg just over a year ago. While the partnership also includes collection sharing, building expansion, and Internet initiatives, the Guggenheim Hermitage alliance is a collaboration, in the truest sense of the word, between two world-class museums.”

Both Mr. Krens and Hermitage Director Dr. Piotrovsky, acknowledged that the site of their first joint venture was unexpected. “Only a year ago, the notion of a Guggenheim Museum in Las Vegas would have seemed, at the very least, implausible,” said Mr. Krens. “While there is no doubt that Las Vegas and its colorful past exercises a certain fascination for both Americans and visitors from abroad, the rationale for a new museum in Las Vegas is more complex than simply its location. Las Vegas is changing, to be sure; today the profile of a typical Las Vegas visitor increasingly approximates the profile of the visitors upon which every major museum in the world—including the Hermitage and Guggenheim—depends, and to which they communicate. Las Vegas is no longer a city of gambling as much as it is an unparalleled tourist destination, with uniquely evocative vernacular architecture and many other attractions ranging from the natural splendor of its desert and mountain ranges, to its sophistication and popularity as a convention center. It is very exciting to locate a Russian-American cultural joint venture in the fastest growing city in the U.S.”

“Our intention,” said Dr. Piotrovsky, “is to use our permanent collections to create a unique cultural experience. The exhibitions that we organize for Las Vegas will also be shown at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, and at the Guggenheim museums in New York, Bilbao, and Venice. Yes, we expect to be reaching a new audience, which, after all, is part of our mission. But the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum is also a new platform from which we can exercise our scholarship, establish a new model for cultural collaboration, and continue to fulfill our original mission.”

The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum was conceived as a venue for the presentation of exhibitions based on the collections of the Guggenheim and Hermitage museums. All programming will be generated by the directors and curatorial staffs of the Guggenheim and Hermitage museums, and the exhibitions will change approximately twice a year. The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum will be operated by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

For its inaugural exhibition, the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum presents Masterpieces and Master Collectors: Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings from the Hermitage and Guggenheim Museums, a selection of 45 works from the collections of The State Hermitage Museum and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

Inaugural Exhibition: Masterpieces and Master Collectors Highlighting the collectors whose connoisseurship was crucial to the formation of the Guggenheim and Hermitage Museum collections, Masterpieces and Master Collectors: Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings from the Hermitage and Guggenheim Museums features important paintings by Paul C?zanne, Marc Chagall, Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso, among others. The exhibition begins with key examples of Impressionism, followed by Post-Impressionism and early Modernism.

This exhibition is sponsored by INTERROS Holding Company.

Vladimir Potanin, President, INTERROS Holding Company, said, “The opening of the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum and the presentation of Masterpieces and Master Collectors: Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings from the Hermitage and Guggenheim Museums is the first step in the fulfillment of a momentous endeavor between two of the most respected museums in the world. It is a promise of a new epoch for us, our children, and generations to come.”

Regarding the inaugural exhibition, Mr. Krens said, “Masterpieces and Master Collectors highlights the way the Guggenheim and Hermitage collections complement and reinforce each other, focusing on the point at which they overlap: the period when the radical avant-garde in Paris rejected the academic style of painting long favored by the official salon in favor of bold new ways of making art. Taken painting by painting, this exhibition is a short course in the history of art at the turn of the twentieth century; it also tells the story of how passionate collectors have shaped the private collections that have made their way into public institutions.”

The exhibition has been organized by Lisa Dennison, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and Albert Kostenevich, Senior Curator of Modern European Painting, The State Hermitage Museum, and St. Petersburg. A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition with introductions by Thomas Krens, Dr. Mikhail Piotrovsky, and narrative texts and historical overviews by Lisa Dennison and Albert Kostenevich. It is available for $35 softcover and $45 hardcover.

Masterpieces and Master Collectors traces the intellectual and conceptual development of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and early Modernism through the work of an innovative European avant-garde from the mid-1860s through the mid-1940s. The 45 paintings in the exhibition, selected from the point at which the collections of the Guggenheim and Hermitage overlap, mark a period during which traditional conventions of painting were rejected. Challenging naturalism, realism, and compositional paradigms through the use of broken brushstrokes, vibrant color, and subject matter from modern life, the paintings in the exhibition emphasize the tensions inherent in rendering three-dimensional forms on canvas. In radically departing from traditional painting techniques, C?zanne, Kandinsky, Matisse, Monet, Picasso, Renoir, Rousseau, van Gogh, and their contemporaries developed a new visual language for a new century.

In the exhibition, landscapes ranging from lush country scenes by C?zanne, van Gogh, and Gauguin, to depictions of urban street life by Pissarro, contrast with and complement a wide selection of portraits from Renoir to Matisse and Modigliani. The earliest work on view is Claude Monet's Lady in the Garden (1867), which is a prime example of early Impressionist plein-air painting. Additional Impressionist works include van Gogh's Landscape with Snow (1888), a painting in which daubs of jewel-colored paint suggest fields beneath a thin layer of snow. Two of Paul Gauguin's Tahitian period paintings, with their signature foreshortened flatness and intense use of color, are on view, including Three Tahitian Women against A Yellow Background (1899), which belonged to Gertrude Stein before it was acquired by Moscow collector Ivan Morozov. These works, as well as C?zanne's landscapes, portraits, and still lifes, among them Still Life with Drapery (1894-95), are representative of the Post-Impressionist pieces in the exhibition.

Early Modernist works include several of Picasso's Cubist paintings and chromatic canvases by Matisse and Kandinsky. Picasso's still lifes, including Pitcher and Bowl of Fruit (1931), segment and distort the picture plane, and Three Women (1908) is an example of the artist's Cubist explorations of the figure. Matisse's Still Life with “Dance” (1909), as well as his portraits, feature swaths of color paired with perspectival distortion and simplified forms. In contrast to these figurative works, Kandinsky's abstract canvases are primers for a code that he created through color and line. Among these is Several Circles (1926), which was confiscated from the Staatliche Germ?ldegalerie, Dresden, as “degenerate art” by the German government in 1937. Two years later, Solomon R. Guggenheim bought the painting from an art dealer in Berlin.

The depth and breadth of the works in Masterpieces and Master Collectors is attributable to the visionary collectors who first purchased artworks by the European avant-garde. These efforts laid the foundations of the Guggenheim and Hermitage collections, and the history of each work in the exhibition represents a unique and complex story, from acquisition in the early twentieth-century to display at the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in 2001.

Several of the Guggenheim's contributions to the exhibition are part of the Thannhauser Collection, a group of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century masterpieces bequeathed to the museum by the German-born dealer and collector Justin K. Thannhauser (1892-1976) and his wife Hilde. Many other works are gifts from Solomon R. Guggenheim's private collection, or museum purchases made under his auspices. Another painting, Picasso's The Studio (1928), comes from The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979), Solomon's niece, transferred her collection and Venetian palazzo to the Guggenheim Foundation in 1976. In addition, important exchanges and outside donations have rounded out these core contributions to build the current Guggenheim collection.

Most of the Hermitage paintings in the exhibition originally belonged in the private holdings of Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin (1854-1936) and Ivan Abramovich Morozov (1871-1921), two prominent Russian businessmen who each developed world-class collections. Both collectors, who had similar artistic interests, belonged to the upper ranks of the Russian business elite. Although they were competitive when it came to their collections, and had different acquisition priorities, they occasionally visited the Parisian salons together. Shchukin had an interest in “launching” young artists, priding himself on purchasing artists' works at the outset of their careers. In contrast, Morozov concerned himself mainly with acquiring the “classics” of new art, searching for key works that would increase the scope of his collection. Both collectors set up private museums in Moscow for the display of their artworks that were later nationalized by the Soviet Regime in 1918. Ultimately, these masterpieces became part of the holdings of The State Hermitage Museum.

Founded in 1764, The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, is one of the world's great museums, with a collection of more than three million objects ranging from prehistoric cultures to Modern art, including significant holdings in Middle Eastern and Egyptian cultures, Greek and Roman art, Islamic and Oriental art, Italian Renaissance art, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century art. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, founded in 1937, maintains a premiere collection of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, with significant holdings of artworks by Beuys, Brancusi, C?zanne, Chagall, Kandinsky, Klee, L?ger, Picasso, Rauschenberg, Rothko, and Serra, among many others.

Building Design Designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his firm OMA, the 7,660-square-foot Guggenheim Hermitage Museum is located at the front of The Venetian, adjacent to the main entrance lobby. Both the exterior and interior walls of the museum are made of Cor-Ten steel, a material with a velvety rusted surface evocative of the velvet-covered walls in the eighteenth-century classical galleries at the Hermitage. The severity and serenity of the steel fa?ade—which can be seen from the Las Vegas Strip—dramatically contrasts with the derivative faux architecture of the major hotels and casinos in the immediate area.

The exhibition space, measuring a total of 6,000 square feet, is partitioned by three Cor-Ten steel walls. A pivot system allows the walls to rotate to provide a variety of exhibition configurations: the three partitions can be lined up at the center, creating one large gallery with a long central wall, or, as in the inaugural exhibition, the space can be divided into four symmetrical galleries, each 1,500-square-feet. Opaque glass panels are installed beneath the steel walls on the front perimeter of the building. This creates an unusual effect—the Cor-Ten steel walls seem to float above the floor.

Guggenheim Las Vegas Also opening to the public on October 7, 2001, is the Guggenheim Las Vegas, a new 63,700-square-foot exhibition space designed by Rem Koolhaas and OMA at The Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino. The Guggenheim Museum's landmark exhibition, The Art of the Motorcycle inaugurates the space. The exhibition explores the motorcycle as both cultural icon and design achievement and features a new installation design by architect Frank Gehry.

FACT SHEET

Project Name: Guggenheim Hermitage Museum

Opening Date: October 7, 2001

Location: The Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino 3355 Las Vegas Boulevard South Las Vegas, NV 89109

Administration: The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum will be managed and operated by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. The two institutions are partners in an international alliance in which joint initiatives are undertaken and resources are shared to facilitate each institution's long-term goals. The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum is under the patronage of the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation, Dr. Mikhail E. Shwydkoi. Museum Description: The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum was conceived as a venue for the presentation of exhibitions based on the collections of the Guggenheim and Hermitage museums. All programming will be generated by the directors and curatorial staffs of the Guggenheim and Hermitage museums. Exhibitions will change approximately twice a year.

Architect: Rem Koolhaas / Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), Rotterdam, Netherlands

Museum Architecture: The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum is located at the front of The Venetian, adjacent to the main entrance lobby. Both the exterior and interior walls of the museum are made of Cor-Ten steel, a material with a velvety rusted surface evocative of the velvet-covered walls in the eighteenth-century classical galleries at the Hermitage. The severity and serenity of the steel fa?ade—which can be seen from the Las Vegas Strip and will be strikingly prominent to visitors approaching the hotel—dramatically contrasts with the derivative faux architecture of the major hotels and casinos in the immediate area. On the interior, four symmetrical galleries—each measuring 1500-square-feet—will also have Cor-Ten steel walls, which will contrast with maple wood floors and ceilings. Natural light will enter the space from several points on the front perimeter of the building.

Opening Exhibition: Masterpieces and Master Collectors: Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings from the Hermitage and Guggenheim Museums The inaugural exhibition at the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum presents 45 major examples of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and early Modern painting from these two world-renowned collections. The exhibition features signature artworks from the Guggenheim and Hermitage, including masterpieces by C?zanne, Chagall, Kandinsky, Matisse, Monet, Picasso, Renoir, and van Gogh.

This exhibition is sponsored by INTERROS Holding Company.

Project Leadership:Thomas Krens, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Dr. Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director, The State Hermitage Museum

Public Information: Tel: 702 414-2440 Fax: 702 414-2442

Website: www.guggenheimlasvegas.org

Museum Hours: 9 am-11 pm daily

Museum Admission: $15 adults, $11 students, $7 children ages 6-12, free children under 6 and museum members.

Tickets:Timed tickets are required for admission Advanced tickets may be purchased toll free at (1) 866-GUGG TIX

Museum Store: Located within the museum. Hours: 9 am – 11:30 pm daily

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