Dissecting The Guggenheim’s Empire

The Guggenheim continues its expansionist appetite. But former board member Peter Lewis says there is more to expansion than met the eye. “In speeches, it was, ‘We’re the museum of the future.’ It was sold that sort of way,” he says. In fact it was driven by the need for revenue. “The rationale always was, ‘We had a nongenerous, noncontributing set of trustees–therefore we had to have other sources of revenue and capital–that’s why we must expand. It’s not the Guggenheim–it’s the Guggenheim merchandising the Bilbao effect.”