The International Expansion of an Art Museum : Guggenheim's Global-Local Contexts

During the past decades, art museums have begun to open foreign outposts. Museums provide an interesting context to study how institutional complexity shapes internationalization. Although museums encounter strikingly similar challenges to multinational enterprises, they have largely been overlooked in international business research. Inspired by a narrative approach, we undertake a qualitative study of the internationalization of the Guggenheim Foundation. Examining the interplay between different narratives, we uncover a non-linear, irregular process of internationalization with “experimental” market entries. Our analysis shows how the Foundation’s past international market entries and heritage shaped its subsequent moves, and how its internationalization process was characterized by unpredictability and complex political negotiations where non-business actors had a powerful voice. We expand recent theorizing on non-profits as area of future research.