Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art in Bilbao, Biscay, Spain. It is one of several museums affiliated to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and features permanent and visiting exhibits of works by Spanish and international artists. It was inaugurated on 18 October 1997 by King Juan Carlos I of Spain, with an exhibition of 250 contemporary works of art. It is one of the largest museums in Spain.

The building, designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, was built alongside the Nervion River, which runs through the city to the Cantabrian Sea. A work of contemporary architecture, it has been hailed as a "signal moment in the architectural culture", because it represents "one of those rare moments when critics, academics, and the general public were all completely united about something", according to architectural critic Paul Goldberger. The museum was the building most frequently named as one of the most important works completed since 1980 in the 2010 World Architecture Survey among architecture experts. The Basque government agreed to cover the US$100 million construction cost, to create a $50 million acquisitions fund, to pay a one-time $20 million fee to the Guggenheim and to subsidize the museum's $12 million annual budget. In exchange, the foundation agreed to manage the institution, rotate parts of its permanent collection through the Bilbao museum and organize temporary exhibitions.

The museum was built by Ferrovial, at a cost of $89 million. About 5,000 residents of Bilbao attended a preopening extravaganza outside the museum on the night preceding the official opening, featuring an outdoor light show and concerts. On 18 October 1997 the museum was opened by Juan Carlos I of Spain.

Urdaibai expansion

thumb|upright=1.20|Aerial view of Urdaibai in 2000

In 2008, the museum revealed that it was looking into building a expansion in the Urdaibai estuary, a UNESCO biosphere reserve located east of Bilbao. By 2022, the Biscay government presented plans to put €40 million ($M) toward the expansion. Following backlash from locals and environmental groups such as Greenpeace, SEO/BirdLife and WWF, the Guggenheim Foundation announced in December 2025 that the project had been abandoned due to "territorial, urban planning and environmental constraints and limitations".

Building

Architecture

thumb|upright|The museum is clad in glass, titanium, and limestone.|alt=

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation selected Frank Gehry as the architect, and its director, Thomas Krens, encouraged him to design something daring and innovative. The curves on the exterior of the building were intended to appear random; the architect said that "the randomness of the curves are designed to catch the light". The interior "is designed around a large, light-filled atrium with views of Bilbao's estuary and the surrounding hills of the Basque country". The atrium, which Gehry nicknamed The Flower because of its shape, serves as the organizing center of the museum. Architect Philip Johnson described it as "the greatest building of our time", while critic Calvin Tomkins, in The New Yorker, characterized it as "a fantastic dream ship of undulating form in a cloak of titanium," its brilliantly reflective panels also reminiscent of fish scales. The Independent calls the museum "an astonishing architectural feat".

thumb|Exterior cladding

The building was constructed on time and budget, which is rare for architecture of this type. In an interview in Harvard Design Magazine, Gehry explained how he did it. First, he ensured that what he calls the "organization of the artist" prevailed during construction, to prevent political and business interests from interfering with the design. Second, he made sure he had a detailed and realistic cost estimate before proceeding. Third, he used computer visualizations produced by Rick Smith employing Dassault Systemes' CATIA V3 software and collaborated closely with the individual building trades to control costs during construction.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines donated $1 million towards its construction.

Foundation

The museum building used more than of concrete, or , as it required deep and solid foundations. The foundation was laid on reinforced concrete piles driven into the bedrock at an average depth of .

The building sits on a clay base from the bed of the nearby Estuary of Bilbao and required the embedment of 665 pilings, driven into the ground by boring machines.

Cladding

thumb|upright|Interior of the [[Atrium (architecture)|atrium]]

The base of the building is covered with beige limestone from the Huéscar quarries near Granada, cut from thick slabs. The building is clear thanks to the walls, specially treated to protect the interior from the effects of the sun. The glass of the windows has also been treated to prevent light from damaging the exposed pieces.

It is clad in titanium plates, arranged in scales, on a galvanized steel structure. The museum's exterior skin is made of 33,000 and his use of the same techniques on the Walt Disney Concert Hall during the previous two years. The success and global awareness of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao ushered in a new era of Virtual Building and was a catalyst for what would become popularly known as Building Information Modeling seven years later.

Architectural critic Paul Goldberger shares the words of others that Bilbao "could not have been constructed without CATIA". He further stated that Bilbao "was the first building for which CATIA played a role in almost every aspect of the design and construction process".

Exhibitions

The museum houses "large-scale, site-specific works and installations by contemporary artists", such as Richard Serra's Snake, and displays the work of Basque artists, "as well as housing a selection of works" from the foundation's modern art collection. The collections usually highlight Avant-garde art, 20th century abstraction, and non-objective art. When the museum announced the 2011 exhibition "The Luminous Interval", a show of artwork belonging to Greek businessman Dimitris Daskalopoulos, who is also a museum trustee, this met with criticism of, among other things, too much curatorial power for a serious benefactor. In 2005, Olivier Berggruen and Ingrid Pfeiffer curated a retrospective of Yves Klein.

In 2012 David Hockney's exhibition drew over 290,000 visitors to the museum.

File:Guggenheim popular art detail.jpg|Tulips by Jeff Koons

File:A Bibao - Puppy - de Jeff Koons.jpg|Puppy by Jeff Koons in front of the museum

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Economic and media impact

The museum was opened as part of a revitalization effort for the city of Bilbao, and its impact on the city quarter became known as the Bilbao effect. Almost immediately after its opening, the Guggenheim Bilbao became a popular tourist attraction, drawing visitors from around the globe. In its first three years, almost 4 million tourists visited the museum, helping to generate about €500 million in economic activity. The regional council estimated that the money visitors spent on hotels, restaurants, shops and transport allowed it to collect €100 million in taxes, which more than paid for the building cost.

thumb|upright=1.4|Aerial view of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

The building was featured in the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough in the pre-title sequence and the Tamil film Sivaji: The Boss (2007), in which it is the setting for the music video of the song "Style", composed by A. R. Rahman. Mariah Carey's music video "Sweetheart", directed by Hype Williams, shows singers Jermaine Dupri and Carey in various locations at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

Criticism

The term "Bilbao effect", referring to how the museum transformed the city, has also been employed by critics who have denounced the museum as a symbol of gentrification and cultural imperialism. The Wall Street Journal suggested that the Bilbao effect should be called the Bilbao anomaly, "for the iconic chemistry between the design of building, its image and the public turns out to be rather rare."

Art critic Brian O'Doherty was positive about approaching the building but criticized the museum's interior effect, saying "[O]nce you get indoors things are a little different. Even the so-called site-specific works didn't look too happy to me. Most of the interior spaces are too vast." He went on to describe how works by Braque, Picasso and Rodchenko "looked absurd" and tiny on the museum's walls.

Controversies

Management and 2007 embezzlement incident

According to a report issued in 2007 by the Basque Court of Auditors, the museum paid more than $27 million for the acquisition of art between 2002 and 2005, including Serra's The Matter of Time for the cavernous ground-floor gallery. After another audit in 2008 revealed that money was missing from accounts, the foundation said that it filed a case against the director, Roberto Cearsolo Barrenetxea, "for financial and accounting irregularities", asserting that he had admitted diverting money from two companies that manage the Guggenheim Bilbao building and its art collection to his own account since 1998.

2021–2022 strike

In 2021–2022, the eighteen cleaners (mostly women) went on strike for nine months until they got raises and full-time contracts.

Gallery

File:BilGug.jpg|The museum over the river

File:Bilbao.Guggenheim13.jpg|Rear façade close-up

File:Bilbao.Koons02.jpg|Bilbao Puppy by Jeff Koons

File:Bilbao Guggenheim Museum, Basque Country, Spain.JPG|Acrylics on fine art paper painting by Iñaki Crespo

File:Guggenheim night 2 (3804035123).jpg|The museum at night

File:Guggenheim in Bilbao.jpg|The museum at sunset