Guggenheim Museum getting chatty about art and architecture

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The monumental Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York has never been the city’s most accessible art institution. It sits aloof and palace-like on a stretch of prime Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side. And have you seen those admission prices? You practically have to be a Guggenheim to get in.

But in a move that is no doubt calculated to soften its image somewhat, the museum is launching a series of free, moderated online chats this month that will give the public the chance to discourse with top curators and scholars. Each ‘Guggenheim Forum,’ as they will be called, will last two weeks and center around a current exhibition at the museum.

First up: a forum dedicated to Frank Lloyd Wright, who just so happens to have designed the New York museum’s famous spiral structure. The forum runs in parallel with the show ‘Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward,’ and will feature online discussions with a handful of architectural brainiacs from around the world.

According to the museum, the first forum will explore the subject of how design can add or detract from quotidian life. Among the topics up for discussion will be the idea of a ‘well-defined space’ and the ways -- sociological, economic, cultural -- in which we can measure a space’s usefulness.

The online discussion kicks off June 22 and will run through July 2.

The following session will focus on the Guggenheim’s upcoming retrospective of painter Vassily Kandinsky, set to open in September. To participate in the moderated chats, you should visit www.guggenheim.org/forum.

-- David Ng