Guggenheim Announces Online Auction to Benefit Exhibition Programming

NEW YORK, NY.- As a finale to the Guggenheim’s 50th anniversary celebrations, the museum will auction works donated to benefit the museum’s exhibition programming, now on view in the exhibition Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum. The works in this eclectic presentation include nearly 200 submissions from international artists, architects, and designers who were asked to imagine their own visionary interventions in the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed rotunda. The works will be previewed at an auction benefit event on March 4, 2010, which will be followed by a performance by Animal Collective and Danny Perez. The auction items will be sold online from March 4 through 18 at charitybuzz.com/guggenheim.

Matthew Ritchie (b. 1964, London), The House of GI–A Proposal, 2009. Ink on vellum paper, 72.1 x 100.3 cm. Artwork

AUCTION PREVIEW BENEFIT
Followed by Animal Collective and Danny Perez Performance
Thursday, March 4, 2010
7–9 pm: Auction preview
9 pm–12 am: Animal Collective and Danny Perez

On March 4, 2010, from 7 to 9 pm, a ticketed auction preview event hosted by the museum’s Young Collectors Council will offer invitees the opportunity to view and be the first to bid on the nearly 200 works in the auction while enjoying cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. Following the preview, Animal Collective and Danny Perez will present a site-specific and psychedelic immersive experience with original music and visuals created for the occasion. Read the press release for this event.

ONLINE AUCTION BY CHARITYBUZZ
March 4–18, 2010
charitybuzz.com/guggenheim

Nearly 200 works from Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum were donated to benefit the museum’s exhibition programming and will be auctioned online at charitybuzz.com/guggenheim. Bidding is open to the public from March 4 to the afternoon of March 18. Bidders can register with a valid credit card at charitybuzz.com. Opening bids vary by work; bidding increments increase as the highest bid rises. Bidders will be notified by e-mail if they are outbid as well as when the auction closes.

Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum: The Exhibition
Since its opening in 1959, the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Guggenheim building has served as an inspiration for invention, challenging artists, architects, and designers to react to its eccentric, organic form. The central void of the rotunda has elicited many unique responses over the years, which have been manifested in both site-specific solo shows and memorable exhibition designs. For the building’s 50th anniversary, the Guggenheim Museum invited more than two hundred artists, architects, and designers to imagine their dream interventions in the space for the exhibition Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum. Organized by Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, and David van der Leer, Assistant Curator for Architecture and Design, the exhibition, on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum from February 12 to April 28, 2010, features renderings of these visionary projects in a salon-style installation that emphasizes the rich and diverse range of the proposals received. The exhibition also functions as a 50th anniversary fundraiser for the museum and more than 95% of the works featured in Contemplating the Void have been gifted to this endeavor.

Among the many works in the exhibition are projects by artists Alice Aycock, FAKE DESIGN (Ai Weiwei), Anish Kapoor, Sarah Morris, Mike Nelson, Paul Pfeiffer, Doris Salcedo, Lawrence Weiner, and Rachel Whiteread; designers such as Fernando and Humberto Campana, Martí Guixé, and Joris Laarman Studio; and architects such as Álvaro Siza Vieira Arquitecto, BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), Greg Lynn FORM, junya.ishigami+associates, MVRDV, N55, Philippe Rahm, Snøhetta,Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects, and West 8.