ABOVE: the interior of the Guggenheim Museum, New York.

The New York Times is featuring an interview with Thomas Krens, the director of the Guggenheim Museum, in which he discusses the museum’s future expansion plans—Moscow, Hong Kong, Lower Manhattan—and some of the museum’s bizarre stumbles, such as The Art of the Motorcycle exhibit and its entire SoHo branch. Krens, the article notes, has just returned from Russia, in preparation for the massive show that the museum is mounting in September, which has the unfortunate name Russia!. (see The Tall Guy in which Jeff Goldblum plays an actor auditioning for Elephant!, a musical take on The Elephant Man.)

What is astonishing about the piece is the lowdown on Guggenheim finances. For instance, the cities in which the Guggenheim outlets are built pay hundreds of millions in construction costs and more every year to build the collection. The Guggenheim Foundation itself has a reported endowment of around $70 million, which seems a strikingly low figure with which to run five international museums. But Krens says the place makes money, and that the Frank Lloyd Wright corkscrew in New York will be restored soon. It needs it.

LINK: New York Times: A Museum Visionary Envisions More

ABOVE: Artist’s crude and very literal representation of British performance artist Mark McGowan kissing a photo of PM Tony Blair 100,000 times.

Mark McGowan, who was in the news last week for photographing himself keying 47 cars in Glasgow and London as a piece of performance art, has now announced that he will kiss a photograph of Mr. Blair 100,000 times outside 10 Downing Street on election day, May 5.

McGowan’s art is clearly bad, but he does have a knack for publicity. His previous dubious projects include soaking in a tub of baked beans and nailing his feet to the floor of a gallery. In short, he is the Reuters Oddly Enough editor’s dream. Glasgow police are still mulling criminal charges against him for the car-vandalizing spree, and the Scottish Arts Council has taken the odd step of announcing that they will never, ever fund his work.

Reuters: Artist Offers Thousands of Kisses

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