ON AUGUST 3, BEFORE TRAVELING TO BERLIN AND ASIA

Six-Year Collaboration to Examine Contemporary Urban Issues in Nine Cities Around the World

International Advisory Committee Selects New York BMW Guggenheim Lab Team

Design of First Mobile Laboratory Unveiled

NEW YORK, NY, May 6, 2011 – Richard Armstrong, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, and Jim O'Donnell, President and CEO, BMW North America, LLC, announced today that the BMW Guggenheim Lab will launch in New York City from August 3 to October 16. Following the New York installation, the BMW Guggenheim Lab will travel to Berlin in spring/summer 2012, and to a city in Asia to be announced later this year. Conceived as an urban think tank and mobile laboratory, the BMW Guggenheim Lab will explore issues confronting contemporary cities and provide a public place and online forum for sharing ideas and practical solutions. The BMW Guggenheim Lab and all of its programming will be free to the public. The new website (bmwguggenheimlab.org) and online communities will create and extend the opportunity to participate in this multidisciplinary urban experiment worldwide.

Over the six-year migration of the BMW Guggenheim Lab, there will be three different themes and three distinct mobile structures, each designed by a different architect and each traveling to three cities around the world. The inaugural BMW Guggenheim Lab will be located on the border between Manhattanʼs Lower East Side and East Village, at 33 East First Street (between First and Second Avenues), on a site owned by the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation.

The first cycle will conclude with a special exhibition presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2013, which will explore the ideas and solutions that were addressed at the BMW Guggenheim Labʼs different venues. The two remaining two-year cycles will be announced at a later date.

The theme for the first three-city cycle is Confronting Comfort, an exploration of how urban environments can be made more responsive to peopleʼs needs, how a balance can be found between modern notions of individual versus collective comfort, and the urgent need for environmental and social responsibility.

An international Advisory Committee has nominated the New York BMW Guggenheim Lab Team (BGL Team), an innovative group of emerging talents in their fields who will create the diverse range of programming that will be presented in New York.

The BMW Guggenheim Lab is curated by David van der Leer, Assistant Curator, Architecture and Urban Studies, and Maria Nicanor, Assistant Curator, Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum.
Press Contacts:
Betsy Ennis/Lauren Van Natten

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