One potential franchise collapses, another rises elsewhere. It’s been a pretty standard year for Thomas Krens, director, brand-builder and relentless expander of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Soon after the Hong Kong government abandoned plans for a massive cultural centre that the Guggenheim was hoping to fill, Abu Dhabi announced that it will build an estimated $200 million Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim within five years. And Krens is still pursuing new venues in Singapore and Mexico. In another sense, the last couple of years have been ones of sober reorganisation for the Guggenheim empire: Krens stepped up and away from the New York Guggenheim to focus on new destinations and promoted long-term protégé Lisa Dennison to direct the day-to-day running of the original headquarters. Ms Dennison immediately promised to strengthen the permanent collection (implicit acknowledgement that, as critics said, it had indeed been neglected under Krens?) and appointed the Guggenheim’s first ever curator of photography, Jennifer Blessing.