Feb. 28 (Bloomberg) -- You could almost hear the New York art world breathe a sigh of relief when the Guggenheim Foundation announced today that Thomas Krens had resigned as its director.

At last.

Now the landmark Fifth Avenue museum he has overseen for 20 years can get back to business -- the business of collecting, conserving and exhibiting modern and contemporary art. Not the franchise business.

Finally it can attract a director who will not have to answer to Krens, 61, a man who has spent much of the last 10 years subjecting the museum to shows of commercial products instead of art, and building McGuggenheims everywhere from Las Vegas to Abu Dhabi. (According to the museum, he will retain the title of senior adviser for international affairs and continue to develop an enormous new Guggenheim in the United Arab Emirates.)

The museum is now in a position to shake off its reputation as a schizoid institution that can be filled with art by Kandinsky one minute and the next pretend to be an Armani showroom or a nightclub in Brazil.

At times this inconsistent, even wacky, programming was a lot of fun. For one thing, it showed that Krens was not shy about taking chances. After all, you don't see many museums attempt to cram 5,000 years worth of Chinese art into one small building, as Krens did in 1998, then turn around the same year and put on a display of Harley-Davidsons.

Guggenheim Clones

``The Art of the Motorcycle'' (which traveled, perhaps more appropriately, to Krens's Guggenheim branch in Las Vegas), brought people to the Guggenheim who had never before stepped inside a museum. That is not a bad thing. But it doesn't speak very well for the institution's dedication to its own collections.

In fact, Krens has been very active in disseminating the Guggenheim's artworks across the world, creating a model for cloning itself that museums like the Tate and the Louvre have started to follow.

During his autocratic reign, Krens became known as a master builder who spearheaded the design and construction of the wildly successful Guggenheim Bilbao in northern Spain. Designed by Frank O. Gehry, it has been so popular since its 1997 opening that cities in Asia, Latin America and Europe have scrambled to build a ``Bilbao'' of their own. And museums everywhere learned that they can give themselves new life with adventurous architecture.

Meanwhile, the Guggenheim flagship -- one of New York's top tourist attractions -- was falling apart. (Its crumbling facade is currently undergoing renovation.) Krens wasted considerable time and money trying to get the city to accept a second Gehry Guggenheim in Manhattan when he failed in his attempt to attract either steady streams of visitors or compelling exhibitions to a SoHo branch. (The space is now a Prada store.)

Losing Its Way

After the terror attacks in 2001, when all New York museums experienced a steep drop in attendance, the Guggenheim seemed to lose its way, unable to decide if it wanted to be an exhibition venue with an international focus or a party space that would draw new young patrons.

In fact, it is not an easy building in which to view art. Unique in the world, the Frank Lloyd Wright design is a circular, inverted pyramid whose interior ramps force viewers to see exhibitions from a slanting floor. Except that too many visitors step into the rotunda to gape at the building and leave without ever taking in an exhibition.

It would be nice to have a director who is determined to change that. In 2003, after a contretemps over the money Krens was spending on global expansion, the museum's board stupidly voted to keep Krens on, causing the withdrawal of Peter B. Lewis, its chairman and biggest benefactor. (Lewis donated $77 million overall to the museum.)

That would have been the ideal moment for Krens to leave, but instead he was kicked upstairs, to head the foundation, while his deputy, chief curator Lisa Dennison, became museum director.

Overstayed Welcome

She lasted barely two years before leaving the nonprofit world for Sotheby's.

To Krens's credit, he brought some stellar shows to the Guggenheim on Fifth Avenue, including important retrospectives for sculptors David Smith and Matthew Barney, video art pioneer Nam Jun Paik, and the uncategorizable Robert Rauschenberg.

Krens also introduced important collections into the Guggenheim fold from the family of Justin K. Thannhauser and from Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo.

But he opened himself and his museum up to ridicule a little too often. At this very moment, Krens has filled the museum with stuffed wolves and tigers by the Chinese-born ``gunpowder'' artist Cai Guo Qiang, who has also suspended nine Chevrolets from the skylight to the rotunda floor. It looks like an auto show crossed with a taxidermists' convention.

Krens is nothing if not a showman. It won't be easy to replace him, especially because the job means not just running the Manhattan museum but also overseeing the Guggenheim's satellites in Venice, Bilbao, Berlin and Las Vegas (a venture with Russia's Hermitage museum.) It will be nice to have a director who is as visionary an executive but is also enthusiastic about new directions in actual art.

Krens simply overstayed his welcome.

(Linda Yablonsky is an art critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this review: Linda Yablonsky in New York at fabyab@earthlink.net.

Last Updated: February 28, 2008 11:42 EST