A busy week for the Guggenheim

After more than three years of painstaking—and sometimes controversial—restoration, last night New York City's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum celebrated a fresh facade for its famous Frank Lloyd Wright building. On hand were museum staff, trustees and city and state politicians who helped make the project possible. The Guggenheim's Chairman, William Mack, introduced Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who called the restoration, "the best face lift on Fifth Avenue"—an especially apropos comment not lost on that crowd...

    To cap the evening's festivities, the Guggenheim's chief curator, Nancy Spector, unveiled the museum's latest acquisition. Entitled "For the Guggenheim," conceptual artist Jenny Holzer's projection of poetry scrolling in huge white letters up the revitalized facade will be on view every Friday night until the end of the year, with a special show on New Year's Eve, and a slightly reduced schedule thereafter.

But even greater anticipation surrounds the Guggenheim's announcement, expected today, of the successor to Thomas Krens, the museum's larger-than-life director for the past twenty years who oversaw both this restoration and the previous one in 1992.