The Art Newspaper

Better living through art

BMW and Guggenheim launch experimental programme in New York

By Bonnie Rosenberg. Web only
Published online: 03 August 2011

The BMW Guggenheim Lab interior, showing the interactive installation "Urbanology"

NEW YORK. The first leg of the BMW Guggenheim Lab is launching in New York on 3 August. The think tank-slash-art installation is part of a six-year, nine citywide enterprise that aims to better urban living through arts collaboration. “We’re using the lab literally to conduct experiments on the city,” said Charles Montgomery, a member of the New York lab team.

The BMW Group and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation have teamed up for the project. According to Richard Armstrong, the Guggenheim's director, BMW’s sponsorship affords the museum “the luxury of intellectual opportunity”. The programme is divided into three different themes. Separate architects will design unique mobile structures to reflect each theme, which will then travel to three cities worldwide. Future locations and architects have not yet been announced.

For the first iteration, Tokyo-based architect Atelier Bow-Wow has designed a space that will transform a gravel lot at the border of Manhattan's Lower East Side and the East Village. Concentrating on the problems associated with art and urban planning, the inaugural theme is “Confronting Comfort”. Wedged between two tenements, the 2,500-square-foot, carbon fibre space will host a cafe and programmes that reveal how “your choices affect the city”. An exhibition at the Guggenheim museum in New York will conclude the first trimester in 2013.

An advisory committee, whose members include designer Elizabeth Diller, Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija and Zimbabwe's mayor of Harare, Muchadeyi Ashton Masunda, nominated the New York team. The group is comprised of Bronx environmental justice activist Omar Freilla, Canadian journalist and “urban experimentalist” Montgomery, Nigerian microbiologist Olatunbosun Obayomi, and Dutch architects Elma van Boxel and Kristian Koreman. The five planned all of the events for the Manhattan installment, including the screening of Blank City, a documentary that explores the underground arts scene of 1970s New York.

The lab is curated by the Guggenheim's assistant curator of architecture and urban studies David van der Leer and assistant curator Maria Nicanor. New York's pop-up arts centre is scheduled to run through 16 October, after which it will travel to Berlin and a yet-to-be-announced city in Asia.