Art of This Century: The Guggenheim Collections

This impressive portrait of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opens with a lackluster essay by museum director Krens, who surveys past acquisitions and outlines plans for the Guggenheim's future as a constellation of branches (such as the outpost in Manhattan's Soho district and the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice). Krens's piece reads like the soft sell of an annual report, as though his intended audiences are trustees and potential donors. The rest of the book is more analytically rigorous, however, its essays and reproductions examining the strengths of the museum's extensive holdings of late-19th- and 20th-century art. There is a detailed account of the construction of the Manhattan Guggenheim, which opened in 1959, from the commissioning of the aged but ever-grandiose and obstinate Frank Lloyd Wright to subsequent modifications to better display artworks within the corkscrew design of the structure. The work of living artists is also included here, among them Jenny Holtzer, whose rings of LED display boards flashing digital messages are perhaps the most spectacular art to have taken Wright's spiral edifice as its specific site. (June)