While Mr. Krens installed himself in a sprawling Tribeca loft, borrowing cash from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to help fund the purchase, Mr. Armstrong has just upgraded—if we can call it that—from a distinguished two-bedroom rental to a dowdy two-bedroom co-op at 150 East 69th Street that he bought with his long-time partner Dorsey Waxter, according to city records.

The apartment, sold for $1.77 million by the Estate of Catherine Alhadeff (a little under the most recent ask of $1.79 million), will almost certainly require a visit from interior decorator Lisa Frazar. Ms. Frazar helped ease the couple's pain when they first arrived in the city from Pittsburgh, taking a rather spare rental that paled in comparison to the modernist glass box of home that Mr. Armstrong described as "the perfect house" to The Wall Street Journal. The Journal even published a slideshow of the old place.

"It's small quarters for someone who holds such a big job," his friend Madeleine Grynsztejn, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, told The Journal of the couple's former home. "It shows he is comfortable in his own skin."

Still, maybe the new ninth-floor pad will make Mr. Armstrong and Ms. Waxter feel more at home during their fourth year in the city? At just under 1,600-square feet, the apartment is quite a bit smaller than the 2,300-square foot rental, but it does have an "oversized living room," a windowed kitchen and dining room (not a dining room with a sky light that can easily seat 20 people like Mr. Krens's old place, but still). The listing, held by Sotheby's broker Phyllis Stock, is so understated it's basically just an unadorned list of features.

Best of all, the new place is a brisk 15 minute walk from the Guggenheim (the couple's last place was just a few blocks away, but according to The Journal, the elevator was "slightly creaky" and there was no doorman).

At least Mr. Armstrong has Mr. Krens beat on commute time.

kvelsey@observer.com

After briefly listing his 4,450-square-foot Tribeca triplex for $5.5 million in 2005—generating rumors that he was not much longer for the Guggenheim's top spot—Mr. Krens took the condo off the market, and there it stayed for the next seven years.

But times change. These days Mr. Krens is the Guggenheim's senior adviser for international affairs, and he has  sold his glorious loft for a glorious $6.32 million, according to city records. You'd think this was an auction at Christie's with that kind of appreciation.

Better yet, Mr. Kren only paid $2.35 million when he bought the okace in 1999, but then, this is a man who took the museum's endowment from $20 million to $118 million.

The penthouse  at 45 Warren Street does not have any starchitects attached to it, but at least you can probably see Frank Gehry's tower looming over Lower Manhattan. The new owners, Andrew and Alison Isaacs, apparently found the huge, sunlit space alluring enough.

The main floor is particularly attractive. As the listing, held by Corcoran broker Amalia Ferrante screams in its cap-laden text, it is "nearly 50 FEET WIDE, 22 FEET TALL to the top of the GIANT SKYLIGHTS and it glows with EXCEPTIONAL LIGHT AND SUN. There is a VAST LIVING AREA with a WOODBURNING FIREPLACE. Here there are SIX BIG WINDOWS and there are another six across the south end of the loft as well. The elegant FORMAL DINING ROOM has its own SKYLIGHT and easily seats twenty for GRAND SCALE entertaining."

Sorry. Catching our breath...

Mr. Krens bought the apartment with the help of an interest-free $1.5 million loan from the foundation. City records show that he finished repaying in 2007. According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy he told the board at the time that he needed a larger place to entertain properly. This certainly fits the bill.

kvelsey@observer.com

The Krens Era showed that museum directors could wander far from the traditionally ethical as long as their boards were compliant. While many of Mr. Krens’ peers copied his “innovations,” many more watched and said nothing. The Association of Art Museum Directors—a strong candidate for the most spineless, useless industry association in America—never sanctioned, censured or formally criticized Mr. Krens in any way.

In the end, Mr. Krens’ most lasting legacy is this: He made the building of synergies between nonprofit art museums and for-profit corporations acceptable to his peers. More than anything else, that’s made him the most influential museum director in America.

His protégé and deputy director, Lisa Dennison, a 27-year Guggenheim veteran, has been named director, effective Oct. 1. But will Krensian ways—particularly with Mr. Krens still ensconced as the head of the Guggenheim Foundation—continue at the Guggenheim?

Already, change is in the air. “My ambition is to double [what we spend on buying art] as quickly as possible,” Ms. Dennison said by phone last week. “There is no question that everyone’s priority is collection-building.”

Mr. Krens’ coziness with big business dates back to at least 1998, when the Guggenheim launched The Art of the Motorcycle, sponsored by BMW, which also gave Mr. Krens a motorcycle. (Mr. Krens returned the bike several years later.) Later, Mr. Krens became friendly with Giorgio Armani, who just happened to give $15 million to the museum just as the Guggenheim launched an Armani retrospective. In the ensuing years, Mr. Krens launched spectacle-driven shows filled with objects from Brazil, Mexico and now Russia. All of these shows existed primarily to help the Guggenheim build relationships with corporate interests in those countries—usually countries in which Mr. Krens wanted to build Guggenheim satellites.

(Mr. Krens’ The Aztec Empire gave me the biggest fright of my museum-going life: The Guggenheim turned off most of the lights in the exhibition spaces in an effort to make a—gasp—dramatic presentation! While walking through the show, I became aware of a set of stairs only after I had pitched myself into some probably priceless gold whatchamacallit. Art museums should let the art objects inspire awe, not the lighting design. But what else would you expect from a museum with no real previous experience with Aztec artifacts?)

Initially, other museum directors blasted Mr. Krens, criticizing the way a not-for-profit art museum was willing to allow corporations to seemingly dictate parts of its program. “They’re after the money,” said Philippe de Montebello, director the Metropolitan Museum of Art, concerning one of Mr. Krens’ deals. Mr. de Montebello and Museum of Modern Art director Glenn Lowry both contributed pointed essays to a brainy bitch-slap of a book, Whose Muse?, a substantially anti-Krensian compilation of essays by museum directors.

Then something changed. Mr. Lowry and Mr. de Montebello turned from criticizing Mr. Krens to copying him. Plenty of other museum directors have as well.

On Dec. 14, Mr. Lowry’s MoMA will open an exhibit that Mr. Krens probably wishes he’d thought of: a retrospective of Pixar films and art. At least Mr. Krens would have fingered Giorgio Pixar for a check; MoMA has received no such donation.

But Mr. Lowry once campaigned against this kind of thing. In Whose Muse?, Mr. Lowry wrote: “[The Guggenheim] has focused its energies on becoming an entertainment center and appears to be no longer interested in or committed to the ideas and the art that gave birth to the museum at its founding.”

Alfred Barr, MoMA’s first director, wrote that MoMA would be the anti-Met, that it would show art “still too controversial for universal acceptance.” Pixar’s films, which have done $3.2 billion in global box office, are pretty widely accepted.

In the same essay, Mr. Lowry wrote that museums must have a “willingness to distinguish between art and fashion, between the circulation of ideas and their commercial exploitation.” Well, one way art might be commercially exploited is this: Works of art owned by a corporation might be loaned to a museum to create an exhibit with that corporation’s name plastered all over it. The corporation might advertise this exhibit heavily, benefiting from the association with a widely respected, just-opened art museum. That pretty much describes this past spring’s Contemporary Voices: Works from the UBS Art Collection. The show was “paid for” not with a $15 million cash gift, but with the donation to MoMA of some of the art in the show.

Even the Whitney Museum of American Art, which has engaged in none of the art-related shenanigans that have plagued the rest of New York’s major art museums, admits that a UBS-style show would at least be tempting. “We would have [such a show] considered, absolutely,” said director Adam Weinberg. “Whether we would have done it in the end, I don’t know.”

Mr. de Montebello is also guilty of criticizing Mr. Krens only to copy him. This spring, the Met showed a retrospective of fashions from Chanel. The exhibit was sponsored by Chanel. The Met’s annual Costume Institute Benefit Gala was co-chaired by designer Karl Lagerfeld of—yup—Chanel. The Met’s Web page, under a tab marked “educational programs,” directed visitors to a special Web site for the exhibition. That site was hosted on Chanel.com. Within four clicks of visiting, a visitor was instructed on how to purchase Chanel products. In a rebuke on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times, art critic Lee Rosenbaum wrote: “[The Met] should be far stricter in drawing the line between scholarly presentation and commercial promotion.”

The zenith of Krensian corporate synergy has come at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where outgoing director Andrea Rich handed over a building to two entertainment corporations (Arts and Exhibitions International and right-wing billionaire Philip Anschutz’s AEG Live) and allowed them to launch a for-profit enterprise, the exhibit Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs. The galleries in which the “Tut” is installed are owned by the people of Los Angeles County. By only fronting for corporations, Mr. Krens looks better by comparison—at least he didn’t hand over his museum. And neither did anyone else in New York; the closest the show will get to here is Philadelphia. Which seems about right.

Ms. Dennison didn’t become one of America’s hottest museum executives by saying impolitic things. In an interview last week, she said all the right things about Mr. Krens—but made it clear that her Guggenheim will be different.

She wants to bring actual art people into the upper level of Guggenheim donors, including onto the Guggenheim’s board. (Mr. Krens had focused on corporate types, a popular board-building technique in recent years. The J. Paul Getty Trust has done the same thing.) She may expand the Guggenheim’s curatorial structure and collecting focus to include architecture and design. She says that she’ll bring the Guggenheim’s collecting more in line with its exhibition practices.

That’s a notable change: Mr. Krens’ exhibition practices were notoriously bipolar, but he explained them by saying that he programmed to build the Guggenheim “brand,” and that the museum’s strong attendance numbers were a function of that brand-building.

But Mr. Krens’ over-the-top Matthew Barney show, widely lauded by critics, drew a self-reported average of 3,151 visitors a day. That’s actually fewer visitors than an exhibition of paintings from the permanent collection drew the same year, and about the same number of visitors that a minimalism show had the next year. A Norman Rockwell exhibit drew only about 15 percent more customers—whoops, viewers—than Brazil. If there is indeed some type of “branding” that joins together Benedictine altars, Glenn Ligon text paintings and the Saturday Evening Post, it’d be lovely to know what it is.

What those numbers really reveal is this: You could line the Guggenheim’s ramp with spitting llamas and about 3,000 people per day would still show up to gawk at the surrounding building.

Some of the changes at Ms. Dennison’s Guggenheim will clearly be tonal. Under Mr. Krens, big blockbuster shows were mandated from the top and curatorial enterprise was scant. “I think our curators probably deserve more visibility and prominence than they get, whatever the reasons,” said Ms. Dennison. “I sometimes feel like if you said to me, ‘Who are the top five curators at MoMA?’ I could say, ‘Blah, blah and blah.’ I don’t feel the man on the street in Chelsea can name the top five curators at the Guggenheim.

“We have a unique curatorial structure: We’re five museums in five locations, and we have a team that doesn’t have to sit at their desks in New York and program one museum. I would like the person on the street at Pastis to be able to name our top five curators.”

Ms. Dennison also talked about the Guggenheim’s collection, which had been substantially neglected in Mr. Krens’ later years. When Mr. Krens came to the Guggenheim as director, he expanded the collection into photography and media arts—the right move. But in recent years, as Mr. Krens became an entrepreneurial Phileas Fogg, the Gugg’s acquisition expenditures languished.

In fiscal years 2001 to 2003, the Guggenheim spent an average of fewer than a million dollars per year on acquisitions, half to a fifth as much as comparable museums such as the Whitney, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. (In 2004, the Guggenheim’s 2004 numbers were more in line with its peers.)

Given Ms. Dennison’s commitment to collection-building, one way she might accomplish those goals is by going after Los Angeles collector and philanthropist Eli Broad, whose collection of contemporary art may be the best available collection of its type in the country. The two have a pre-existing relationship: Before taking the Guggenheim directorship, Ms. Dennison had a Broad-driven offer to skip to the West Coast and run a Broad-driven contemporary-art space at LACMA.

“You know that collection is not committed to any museum,” Ms. Dennison said with a knowing laugh. “Well, uh, I haven’t had that discussion [with Mr. Broad] yet, but it would be an opportunity I’d love to have. Of course, the big issue with collections is space. And the more space you have, the more you have the ability to attract those collections.”

There is no room at the moment in New York to show Mr. Broad’s collection. But: “Our collection was at the Guggenheim Bilbao,” Mr. Broad said. “We’re open to anything. I’m open to any discussions.”

Right now, the Guggenheim is more a tourist stop than it is a local institution. It didn’t get around to beginning a repair job on its crumbling landmark Frank Lloyd Wright building until this year. Museum membership is so low that a museum spokesman wouldn’t even release the numbers upon request. “There’s definitely room for improvement,” Ms. Dennison said.

Under Mr. Krens, the Guggenheim seemed less interested in being locally vital than in being marginally relevant globally. The Guggenheim’s hoped-for and actual satellite expansion into Las Vegas, Berlin, Bilbao, Rio de Janeiro, Singapore, Guadalajara, Mexico and Taichung, Taiwan, received more attention than virtually anything the Guggenheim did on Fifth Avenue.

Those mostly-failures will be an afterthought. Bilbao is a lovely building, but it’s a one-off. No American not-for-profit museum has found a way to make satellite expansion work—ultimately not even the Guggenheim. Bilbao is less an example of Mr. Krens’ success than an exception to his failure. Ms. Dennison’s tenure will be measured entirely by what she does—or doesn’t do—in New York.

But none of this was enough to impress a landlord on West End Avenue, who turned Mr. Belafonte down for an apartment in his stately building, which dated back to the turn of the century.

The singer-cum-activist fought back not with picket signs, but with the muscle celebrities give such a workout: money. He bought the entire 13-story building and converted it to a co-op two years later, attracting the likes of singer Lena Horne to take up residence there.

Now, after spending more than half his life on the building’s fifth floor, Mr. Belafonte has put his apartment on the market for $15 million. The 21-room spread—it has one of the largest floor plans on all of West End Avenue—could now change hands for the first time in 46 years.

The vast apartment includes eight bedrooms, eight bathrooms, a library, a poolroom and a laundry room.

Mr. Belafonte’s master bedroom features a sauna, while several of the other bedrooms include en suite baths and walk-in closets.

Artifacts and memorabilia collected over seven decades of a very momentous life can be found throughout the sprawling apartment. Works by artists Charles White and Diego Rivera adorn the walls, as well as handwritten correspondence from the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr.

The Mexican-tiled gourmet kitchen includes two Sub-Zero refrigerators. Other features include high ceilings, wood floors and four wood-burning fireplaces.

Mr. Belafonte combined two units to form the palatial living space that is over 7,000 square feet. After joining the “A” and “B” lines, the entertainer could enjoy a rare vantage point, with exposures in all four directions. Also, there are two keyed elevators leading up to the apartment, so the lucky buyer can take his or her pick when returning home.

The prewar doorman building also has a garage (although the lengthy waiting list for a spot could last another 46 years).

Mr. Belafonte’s apartment is listed with brokers Richard Mortimer and Maria Pascal of Prudential Douglas Elliman. Mr. Mortimer declined to comment.

A native New Yorker, Mr. Belafonte was born in Harlem, not far from the present apartment, in 1927, and at age 17 dropped out of high school to join the Navy. About a decade following the war (and after various other jobs), he received an RCA contract and started recording.

Singing, acting and composing aside, Mr. Belafonte has been involved in numerous causes, and lauded by many for his efforts as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and work on civil-rights issues. However, Mr. Belafonte’s friendship with dictator Fidel Castro and his harsh 2002 critique of then–Secretary of State Colin Powell have won him numerous detractors, especially amongst conservatives.

Besides performing (and courting controversy), Mr. Belafonte has kept busy in the real-estate market, recently putting his oceanfront property in St. Martin on the market for $2.9 million, according to the New York Post. The 3.3-acre estate is located on Plum Beach, and features a four-bedroom house, a gardener’s cottage, caretaker’s cottage and pool.

Although he is selling his Upper West Side pad, the longtime New Yorker plans to remain in the city, according to a source close to the entertainer.

Mr. Belafonte could not be reached by press time.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum director Thomas Krens, who recently listed his sun-drenched Tribeca penthouse for $5.5 million, has abruptly taken it off the market.

On July 23, both the real-estate and art worlds were rocked with an entry on Modern Art Notes, critic Tyler Green’s much-read blog, which reported that Mr. Krens was selling his triplex apartment. But less than a week later the listing disappeared.

A Guggenheim spokesperson confirmed that Mr. Krens took the luxurious property off the market, but would not elaborate on the circumstances. The 4,450-square-foot condo had been listed with Amalia Ferrante of the Corcoran Group. Ms. Ferrante did not return calls for comment.

By putting his downtown residence on the market, Mr. Krens helped fuel rumors he was not long for the top position at the museum. The Guggenheim’s financial dealings became hot gossip after Vicky Ward’s recent 6,300-word Vanity Fair article documenting the battle among Guggenheim Foundation trustees over Mr. Krens’ tenure and future prospects.

Throughout his 17 years as the Guggenheim’s chief, Mr. Krens has been lent $1.5 million—interest free—from the foundation for his personal real-estate ventures. In 1988 and 1989, when the former Williams College art-history professor first arrived in New York, Mr. Krens was given a total of $1 million toward a Fifth Avenue apartment, with an additional $500,000 given 10 years later toward the purchase of his Tribeca home.

In August 1999, Mr. Krens and his wife, designer Susan Lyons, purchased the downtown penthouse for $2.35 million. Mr. Krens and Ms. Lyons still owe the entire $1.5 million borrowed from the foundation, according to March 2005 mortgage records obtained by The Observer.

Before buying the Warren Street apartment, Mr. Krens had informed the board that a larger place was needed to entertain properly, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

With a 50-foot-wide main floor and 22-foot-tall ceilings with huge skylights, it is the ideal place to party (and extract money from wealthy patrons of the arts). The living area includes six large windows and a wood-burning fireplace.

The dining room (complete with Frank Gehry-designed chairs) seats at least 20, and light enters through yet another skylight. For all those starving art dealers, there is both a chef’s kitchen and a service kitchen.

Besides the ample party space, there are four bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms. On the second floor is Mr. Krens’ master suite, with adjacent bath. On the third level, there is a studio with a skylight and a 900-square-foot terrace with superb views.

If Mr. Krens puts his apartment back on the market, he could double his investment after only six years. That’s pretty good, and far better than the foundation, which by providing an interest-free loan, will end up losing money on the transaction.

Park Slope

431 Seventh Street

Two-and-half-bedroom, two-bathroom co-op.

Asking: $1.5 million. Selling: $1.5 million.

Charges: $750.

Time on the market: three months.

EMPTY NEST EGG With the kids grown up, this retired couple decided to move to their country house. So there was no reason to hold onto their cherished duplex co-op in Park Slope. The 20-foot-wide and 60-foot-deep brownstone includes high ceilings, a fireplace, bay windows, skylights, hardwood floors and exposed brick. “It retained a lot of the prewar detail but had been completely gut-renovated,” said Tracey McLean of the Corcoran Group, who represented the buyers and sellers with her colleague, Patricia Neinast. In addition to the prewar charm, the 2,200-square-foot apartment includes a modern kitchen with stainless-steel appliances and granite countertops. It took only one open house to attract the buyers, with about 20 parties coming to ogle the loft-like space. A young couple purchased the apartment, paying the full asking price; the buyers are leaving behind the West Village for the quaint Brooklyn neighborhood where everyone seems to be pushing a stroller. But if they ever long for Manhattan, there’s a simple solution: The apartment features a 560-square-foot private roof deck that offers superb views of the Manhattan skyline.

But none of this was enough to impress a landlord on West End Avenue, who turned Mr. Belafonte down for an apartment in his stately building, which dated back to the turn of the century.

The singer-cum-activist fought back not with picket signs, but with the muscle celebrities give such a workout: money. He bought the entire 13-story building and converted it to a co-op two years later, attracting the likes of singer Lena Horne to take up residence there.

Now, after spending more than half his life on the building’s fifth floor, Mr. Belafonte has put his apartment on the market for $15 million. The 21-room spread—it has one of the largest floor plans on all of West End Avenue—could now change hands for the first time in 46 years.

The vast apartment includes eight bedrooms, eight bathrooms, a library, a poolroom and a laundry room.

Mr. Belafonte’s master bedroom features a sauna, while several of the other bedrooms include en suite baths and walk-in closets.

Artifacts and memorabilia collected over seven decades of a very momentous life can be found throughout the sprawling apartment. Works by artists Charles White and Diego Rivera adorn the walls, as well as handwritten correspondence from the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr.

The Mexican-tiled gourmet kitchen includes two Sub-Zero refrigerators. Other features include high ceilings, wood floors and four wood-burning fireplaces.

Mr. Belafonte combined two units to form the palatial living space that is over 7,000 square feet. After joining the “A” and “B” lines, the entertainer could enjoy a rare vantage point, with exposures in all four directions. Also, there are two keyed elevators leading up to the apartment, so the lucky buyer can take his or her pick when returning home.

The prewar doorman building also has a garage (although the lengthy waiting list for a spot could last another 46 years).

Mr. Belafonte’s apartment is listed with brokers Richard Mortimer and Maria Pascal of Prudential Douglas Elliman. Mr. Mortimer declined to comment.

A native New Yorker, Mr. Belafonte was born in Harlem, not far from the present apartment, in 1927, and at age 17 dropped out of high school to join the Navy. About a decade following the war (and after various other jobs), he received an RCA contract and started recording.

Singing, acting and composing aside, Mr. Belafonte has been involved in numerous causes, and lauded by many for his efforts as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and work on civil-rights issues. However, Mr. Belafonte’s friendship with dictator Fidel Castro and his harsh 2002 critique of then–Secretary of State Colin Powell have won him numerous detractors, especially amongst conservatives.

Besides performing (and courting controversy), Mr. Belafonte has kept busy in the real-estate market, recently putting his oceanfront property in St. Martin on the market for $2.9 million, according to the New York Post. The 3.3-acre estate is located on Plum Beach, and features a four-bedroom house, a gardener’s cottage, caretaker’s cottage and pool. Although he is selling his Upper West Side pad, the longtime New Yorker plans to remain in the city, according to a source close to the entertainer.

Mr. Belafonte could not be reached by press time.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum director Thomas Krens, who recently listed his sun-drenched Tribeca penthouse for $5.5 million, has abruptly taken it off the market.

On July 23, both the real-estate and art worlds were rocked with an entry on Modern Art Notes, critic Tyler Green’s much-read blog, which reported that Mr. Krens was selling his triplex apartment. But less than a week later the listing disappeared.

A Guggenheim spokesperson confirmed that Mr. Krens took the luxurious property off the market, but would not elaborate on the circumstances. The 4,450-square-foot condo had been listed with Amalia Ferrante of the Corcoran Group. Ms. Ferrante did not return calls for comment.

By putting his downtown residence on the market, Mr. Krens helped fuel rumors he was not long for the top position at the museum. The Guggenheim’s financial dealings became hot gossip after Vicky Ward’s recent 6,300-word Vanity Fair article documenting the battle among Guggenheim Foundation trustees over Mr. Krens’ tenure and future prospects.

Throughout his 17 years as the Guggenheim’s chief, Mr. Krens has been lent $1.5 million—interest free—from the foundation for his personal real-estate ventures. In 1988 and 1989, when the former Williams College art-history professor first arrived in New York, Mr. Krens was given a total of $1 million toward a Fifth Avenue apartment, with an additional $500,000 given 10 years later toward the purchase of his Tribeca home.

In August 1999, Mr. Krens and his wife, designer Susan Lyons, purchased the downtown penthouse for $2.35 million. Mr. Krens and Ms. Lyons still owe the entire $1.5 million borrowed from the foundation, according to March 2005 mortgage records obtained by The Observer.

Before buying the Warren Street apartment, Mr. Krens had informed the board that a larger place was needed to entertain properly, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

With a 50-foot-wide main floor and 22-foot-tall ceilings with huge skylights, it is the ideal place to party (and extract money from wealthy patrons of the arts). The living area includes six large windows and a wood-burning fireplace.

The dining room (complete with Frank Gehry-designed chairs) seats at least 20, and light enters through yet another skylight. For all those starving art dealers, there is both a chef’s kitchen and a service kitchen.

Besides the ample party space, there are four bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms. On the second floor is Mr. Krens’ master suite, with adjacent bath. On the third level, there is a studio with a skylight and a 900-square-foot terrace with superb views.

If Mr. Krens puts his apartment back on the market, he could double his investment after only six years. That’s pretty good, and far better than the foundation, which by providing an interest-free loan, will end up losing money on the transaction.

Park Slope 431 Seventh Street Two-and-half-bedroom, two-bathroom co-op. Asking: $1.5 million. Selling: $1.5 million. Charges: $750. Time on the market: three months. EMPTY NEST EGG With the kids grown up, this retired couple decided to move to their country house. So there was no reason to hold onto their cherished duplex co-op in Park Slope. The 20-foot-wide and 60-foot-deep brownstone includes high ceilings, a fireplace, bay windows, skylights, hardwood floors and exposed brick. “It retained a lot of the prewar detail but had been completely gut-renovated,” said Tracey McLean of the Corcoran Group, who represented the buyers and sellers with her colleague, Patricia Neinast. In addition to the prewar charm, the 2,200-square-foot apartment includes a modern kitchen with stainless-steel appliances and granite countertops. It took only one open house to attract the buyers, with about 20 parties coming to ogle the loft-like space. A young couple purchased the apartment, paying the full asking price; the buyers are leaving behind the West Village for the quaint Brooklyn neighborhood where everyone seems to be pushing a stroller. But if they ever long for Manhattan, there’s a simple solution: The apartment features a 560-square-foot private roof deck that offers superb views of the Manhattan skyline.

And they entertain speculation Mr. Krens is leaving the Guggenheim, pointing to rumors in Artland that he is on the way out at the Guggenheim, and Vicky Ward's recent Vanity Fair account of the Guggenheim saga.

Note those Gehry-designed chairs!

Also, some serious reporting: "According to the Gugg's IRS Form 990 tax filings, the Krens-directed Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation has carried a a $1.5 million interest-free housing loan to Krens on their books since at least FY 2001."

What Mr. Kimmelman failed to report, however, is that Mr. Krens has been selling works of art from the Guggenheim's so-called "permanent" collection in a desperate attempt to support his spendthrift expansion programs here and abroad. According to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal , "In all, the Guggenheim netted $10.1 million from art sales in 1999; $4.55 million in 2000." Apparently, the figures for 2001-2 aren't yet available, so we don't yet know exactly what's been sold. The works are said to be "minor" or "redundant" or otherwise dispensable, but until they're publicly identified, there's no reason to believe the Guggenheim's word about this or anything else. Mr. Krens himself is anything but a connoisseur in such matters.

At the outset of his tenure at the Guggenheim, when he chose to act as his own curator in mounting a sprawling, badly selected exhibition of the German Neo-Expressionist painters whose work was then enjoying a short-lived vogue, it looked as if the problem posed by Mr. Krens' appointment might be limited to aesthetic incompetence. For the director of an art museum, this is a lamentable failing-but not, alas, a rarity in the curatorial ranks. We weren't yet in a position to take the measure of a far greater threat to the museum's future: Mr. Krens' tomorrow-the-world ambition to create an ever-expanding, ever-more-costly Guggenheim empire, with satellite museums in Europe, Asia and South America, not to mention the ill-fated attempt to set up shop at the casino in Las Vegas. And while the whole art world was applauding Frank Gehry's design for the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, Mr. Krens was allowing Frank Lloyd Wright's landmark Guggenheim here in Manhattan to fall into shameful neglect.

The fact is that during Mr. Krens' 14-year tenure as director of the Guggenheim, the museum virtually ceased to make a significant contribution to the art life of New York. Some of us are old enough to recall the days when the Guggenheim was a vital presence in the city. I don't know where Michael Kimmelman was hanging out in the years preceding Mr. Krens' tenure, but the Times critic was dead wrong in describing a "sleepy modern art museum with a crumbling landmark building before Mr. Krens arrived." Before any of us had ever heard of Mr. Krens, in the years when the principal curators at the museum were Margit Rowell and Diane Waldman, the exhibitions devoted to Mark Rothko, Julio González, Joan Miró and a number of other modern masters were among the finest of their kind anywhere in the world, and so were the authoritative catalogs that accompanied them. "Sleepy" might be an apt description of Mr. Kimmelman's memory of such matters, but it can hardly be applied to the Guggenheim in its pre-Krens period.

Why, in the face of this debacle-which is a cultural disaster for New York as well as a financial one for the museum-why, in the face of all this, Mr. Krens has not been given the boot remains to be explained, especially when so many members of the museum's staff have lost their jobs as the direct result of his flagrant mismanagement. And we shouldn't be misled by another of Mr. Kimmelman's claims: "Now art has a chance to be front and center at the Guggenheim" as the result of the enforced retrenchment. There's nothing in Mr. Krens' record to support such an optimistic assessment. Until the Guggenheim's board is prepared to clean house, the museum is likely to remain a casualty of Mr. Krens' overreaching ambition. It's somehow a perfect epitaph to the Krens era that the Guggenheim Hermitage branch in Las Vegas will soon be featuring yet another showing of the Norman Rockwell retrospective. Is this what the chief art critic of The Times has in mind when he writes that "Now art has a chance to be front and center at the Guggenheim"?

The sale followed months of negotiations with the building's co-op board, which was concerned about the mogul's renovation plans and their potential to disrupt neighbors, according to brokers. He signed a contract to purchase the 6,000-square-foot triplex apartment on Jan. 25 and finally gained ownership in early September. Louis Meisel, the board president, has denied that there was any controversy.

In the midst of Mr. Murdoch's negotiations with the Prince Street bigwigs, the media chief put his previous home, a co-op at the Hampshire House Hotel at 150 Central Park South that he shared with first wife, Anna Murdoch, on the market for $5.5 million. According to one broker familiar with the property, Mr. Murdoch–who has been living with Ms. Deng in SoHo's Mercer Hotel since October 1998–put the Hampshire House apartment on the market quietly last May, then more seriously last month.

"He's getting serious now because he closed on Prince Street," said the source.

The Prince Street penthouse has five bedrooms, five baths, a 1,000-square-foot living room and a 3,000-square-foot rooftop terrace.

The Central Park South co-op, which is situated between Sixth and Seventh avenues, has views of the park from the 24th floor, two baths, a library and a grand entrance gallery. The maintenance is $7,293. Through his publicist, Howard Rubenstein, Mr. Murdoch had no comment.

Guggenheim Director Installs in TriBeCa

In his 11 years as director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, former Williams College professor Thomas Krens has helped the art museum grow tentacles–expanding from its landmark Frank Lloyd Wright home on Fifth Avenue to SoHo, Berlin and Bilbao, Spain. In August, Mr. Krens and his wife, fabric and textile designer Susan Lyons, themselves set out for TriBeCa, spending $2.35 million for a triplex penthouse at 45 Warren Street. The couple will move from their current address at Fifth Avenue and 17th Street.

According to a broker close to the deal, the 52-year-old Mr. Krens' new condominium, which boasts 1,600 square feet of terrace space and a number of skylights, is "heavenly." The 4,200-square-foot apartment, between Church Street and West Broadway, has three bedrooms, two full and two half-baths, a long dining space for entertaining and a sun room on the top floor that will probably be used as an office. A publicist for the Guggenheim confirmed the sale but would not comment further.

Mr. Krens' architect, Tom Hut, co-owner of Hut Sachs Studios, said the place only required a little renovation. "It's very light-filled and very simply done," said Mr. Hut. "What we're doing for him is just sort of accommodating his uses to it–some slight modifications of the rooms and whatnot. It's quite minor."

One priority, Mr. Hut said, was to make way for a few pieces of art–the key word being few. "We're definitely lighting the walls for placing art, but it's not going to be a museum down there. I think he made that clear to us," said the architect.

The apartment was being sold by a couple of Texans who were planning to move to town; they spent a little over $2 million for the property in June 1998. When their plans to move north fell through, they put the apartment back on the market–largely unaltered–for $2.5 million. It sold quickly, according to the broker, for $150,000 beneath the asking price, still making the Texans a six-figure profit.

Despite its more than 80-block distance from Guggenheim headquarters at Fifth Avenue and 89th Street, Mr. Krens' new address places him within a stone's throw of the SoHo Guggenheim at Broadway and Prince streets, and well within range of the burgeoning Chelsea art scene.

Midtown East

SUDDENLY SINGLE BROOKE SHIELDS GETS U.N. PAD FOR ALMOST $700,000. Brooke Shields has suddenly settled down.

Since her April divorce from U.S. Open champion Andre Agassi, the actress has been apartment-shopping all over Manhattan. In early August, she finally settled on a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment just north of the United Nations in the low East 50's overlooking the East River. She paid almost $700,000.

Known as gracious and elegant herself, Ms. Shields wanted something similarly understated (are you listening, Puff Daddy?) and got it. The prewar building, on a quiet block, is a doorman co-op with–note to stalkers–very good security. The owner of the apartment, a divorced woman, sold her place because she was leaving the country. Her apartment was on the market for just over a month before Ms. Shields came along.

For years the actress owned a town house nearby, which she sold a few years ago. She also has a place in Los Angeles, where her television show, Suddenly Susan , is taped. The new 1,400-square-foot apartment will serve as an occasional nest. It has been renovated, with a state-of-the-art kitchen, marble baths and southern exposures.

300 East 54th Street

One-bed, two-bath, 1,000-square-foot-co-op.

Asking: $450,000. Selling: $450,000.

Charges: $1,220.39; 60 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: one week.

LONG ISLAND REFUGEE FINDS NEW PERCH TO WATCH RERUNS A divorced college professor who teaches business decided to move into the city from Long Island now that her daughter is off at college. She got a 17th-floor apartment with 1,000 square feet, a balcony, panoramic views and an eat-in kitchen (for those Swanson frozen-dinner, Chicago Hope evenings at home). The fellow who sold this apartment, a cosmetics merchandiser, bought a bigger place near Gramercy Park; he had lived in the apartment for about two years. Building amenities include a doorman, a large rooftop swimming pool, a garden and a health club. Broker: Bellmarc East (Anthony Miller).

Upper West Side

12 West 72nd Street (Oliver Cromwell)

Three-bed, 2.5-bath, 2,000-square-foot prewar co-op.

Asking: $1.15 million. Selling: $1.075 million.

Charges: $3,230; 62 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: three weeks.

WITNESS CHAPPAQUA EMPTY OUT. This grand duplex, which occupies the 23rd and 24th floors of the Oliver Cromwell, built in 1927, was used as a rental; the owner never lived in it. After making some major renovations, he decided to sell. The apartment sat pristine but unsold for about a year at a higher price, but as soon as the price was dropped this summer, the sale took a matter of weeks. It has a formal dining room, central air conditioning, marble bathrooms, beamed ceilings, a kitchen with granite counters and wood cabinets, and gorgeous views of the park. The buyers are an attorney and his wife from Westchester, who, for all we know, moved away to escape the impending Clintons. Broker: Corcoran Group (Lisa Lippman; Lois Peerce).

60 Riverside Drive

Three-bed, three-bath, 1,700-square-foot co-op.

Asking: $925,000. Selling: $946,000.

Charges: $1,492; 40 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: one week.

FORCED TO LIVE IN DREADFUL L.A. The couple selling this apartment moved in less than a year ago. Now, because of a job, they're very reluctantly moving to Los Angeles, leaving behind a clean, well-lighted place with a terrace, and resplendent park and river views. A fair amount of money had been put into renovations: Previous owners had combined a two-bedroom apartment and a studio to give it three bedrooms, and the current sellers had the closet doors replaced, the floors

refinished and the lighting fixtures changed. They considered holding on to the apartment but realized it might be better to simply let go, make some moola and head west. More than a few people were falling over each other to snap this place up, so the haggling went into a sealed-bid situation. The victorious buyers, probably still gloating, both work in the finance industry, have no children and moved from another (smaller) apartment in the same neighborhood. Broker: Corcoran (Ms. Lippman).

Greenwich Village

111 Fourth Avenue

One-bed, one-bath, 800-square-foot co-op.

Asking: $425,000. Selling: $425,000.

Charges: $1,030; 50 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: 2.5 weeks.

LADIES IRON THINGS OUT FOR $425,000. A former knitting factory renovated for residential rentals in the 1970's, this building went co-op in 1980. It has two rooftop decks, a doorman, central air conditioning (included in the maintenance fees) and laundry facilities on every floor. The woman who lived in this ninth-floor apartment is a former executive at the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company who served on the building's board of directors; she very reluctantly gave up her place to attend business school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her apartment, like all the others in this building near 12th Street, is a duplex with 14-foot-high ceilings and 10-foot-high windows. The corner apartment, one of the building's largest, is essentially all glass. The owner was a bit obsessive about ironing and had a special board installed in her kitchen, which the buyer loved, along with everything else. Her bid was put in an hour after she saw the apartment. This sale, broker Miriam Sirota said, is yet another case of what she calls the 111 Fourth Avenue Effect, which occurs immediately upon entering any of the apartments at this address. Symptoms include eyes popping out of one's head and jaws dropping. Broker: Bellmarc Realty (Miriam Sirota); Douglas Elliman (Philip Altland).

TriBeCa

176 Broadway

One-bed, two-bath, 1,700-square-foot co-op.

Asking: $318,000. Selling: $335,000.

Charges: $1,478; 50 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: one week.

RETURN FROM BROOKLYN, BUT NOT IN TIME TO RETURN TO 212. This apartment went on the market at the beginning of the summer, when the weather was hot and sales were even hotter. The buyers had been looking for some time and were eager to make their purchase; they had certain space requirements but couldn't afford what they wanted in, say, the Village or SoHo. This place, located near the financial district, is an open, bi-level loft in a prewar renovated building with a concierge. Each loft in the building has a unique layout. This one, on the ninth floor, has just fair light since there are so many tall buildings in the area. No doubt this transplanted couple from Brooklyn is just thrilled to be back in 212–oops, make that 646–sunlight or not. Broker: Benjamin James Associates (Camille McKinley).

SoHo

2 Charlton Street

Two-bed, two-bath, 1,100-square-foot co-op.

Asking: $645,000. Selling: $645,000.

Charges: $979; 54 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: three weeks.

NEW ENGLAND BOY FINDS HIS POSTWAR PALACE. On a tiny street just below Greenwich Village at the edge of SoHo is this doorman building, with delectable apartments inside and a lovely common-use garden. The sellers are a semi-retired couple who worked in advertising; they're moving to California to soak up the sunshine and inhale some fresh air. The buyer is a single man, New England born and bred, who works as a Government attorney. He lived previously in the Flatiron district, and really, really wanted this place as soon as he saw it. Alas, there was one offer submitted ahead of his. Fate intervened: The early bidders withdrew their offer at the last minute–they totally couldn't deal with the postwar thing (the building went up in the mid-60's). They decided instead to spend more money and go prewar in the West Village. Whatever. So the broker called back the lawyer's broker immediately, and he's now very happily ensconced in his new digs. The 14th-floor apartment has panoramic, picture-postcard views, especially breathtaking at night. Even the kitchen has a window. Broker: Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy (Deborah Gimelson).