On Monday, artist Molly Crabapple published “Slaves of Happiness Island,” a firsthand report of the slave-like worker conditions on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island; the Guggenheim, Louvre, and NYU are all building enormous new enterprises there [...] These conditions violate local and international labor laws. We have now received leaked email correspondence between the Guggenheim and Crabapple ... [that] reveal a shocking unwillingness to provide any statement to journalists [...] — ArtFCity

“You know how Ford said you can have any car you like as long as it’s black? In the UAE they can make whatever you want, as long as it’s a building. They can’t make free speech or human rights” — Vice.com author Molly Crabapple

City boosters in this Nordic capital dream of a Guggenheim museum of Finnish wood rising near the Baltic Sea and one day drawing millions of tourists and cruise passengers. But the huge costs of the proposed development are stirring a backlash here against an institution that is ordinarily accustomed to eager suitors. — nytimes.com

Saadiyat Island, off the coast of Abu Dhabi, has seen $27 billion in investments pour in as the island hopes to become a new beacon of culture in the region

developers behind the island have received international attention for the poor conditions in which migrant laborers work and live. Reports have found that in some cases, the control employers hold over the island's workers, such as withholding their passports to prevent them from returning to their home countries, amounts to forced labor. — Al Jazeera America

A spoof Guggenheim website, globalguggenheim.org, went live this morning with a satirical “Sustainable Design Competition” for the global museum’s embattled Abu Dhabi branch. The website, a slightly modified replica of the official Guggenheim version, features images of Saadiyat Island, where the museum is to be built, overlayed with the hashtag #futureguggenheim, as well as references to Gulf Labor’s ongoing 52 Weeks campaign. — hyperallergic.com

Now that Helsinki has decided to reserve a plot in the South Harbour, the Guggenheim Foundation can organize and fund an international architecture competition for a potential Helsinki museum location. — yle.fi

In his first solo exhibition in a New York museum since 1980, American artist James Turrell sets out to reimagine the iconic rotunda of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in a dramatic transformation. The luminous and immersive site-specific work, Aten Reign, will be part of the upcoming exhibition James Turrell at NYC's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum which opens on June 21, 2013. — bustler.net

For the next round of discussion I’d like to shift the subject to the physical environment, posing the question, Is architecture rational? — guggenheim.org

On October 22, 1953, Sixty Years of Living Architecture: The Work of Frank Lloyd Wright opened in New York on the site where the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum would eventually be built. Two Frank Lloyd Wright-designed buildings were constructed specifically to house the exhibition: a temporary pavilion made of glass, fiberboard, and pipe columns; and a 1,700-square-foot, fully furnished, two-bedroom, model Usonian house representing Wright’s organic solution for modest, middle-class dwellings. — bustler.net

Each year, more than 1.3 million visitors enter and exit through our doors to behold Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiraling architecture... After years of constant use, the single revolving door and adjacent double doors require immediate attention. With your help, we can secure a Partners in Preservation grant that will provide the crucial funds to restore the doors and surrounding detail to Frank Lloyd Wright’s original design. — guggenheim.org

The results are in from a yearlong feasibility study commissioned by the City of Helsinki and undertaken by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum to examine the possibility of building a new Guggenheim Museum in Finland.

The study concluded that yes, such a project would significantly boost Helsinki’s efforts to become a cultural capital. — artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com

For several years, the Gulf states have been engaged in an ambitious rebranding campaign, to establish themselves as a centre for art, culture and science. Leading academic institutions, like the New York University or Paris's Sorbonne university, have opened campuses in Abu Dhabi; major museums, like the Louvre and the Guggenheim are planning to build branches there. — Qantara.de