The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is one of the world's most famous museums, more for its building than for the works it holds. Opened on 18 October 1997, it grew from an agreement between the Basque government and New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, as part of Bilbao's regeneration plan. Its success, with around a million visitors a year, gave rise to the "Bilbao effect": the power of spectacular architecture to transform a city's image and economy.
The building
Designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, the museum stands on the bank of the ría in a former port area, next to La Salve bridge, which was incorporated into the design. It is a cluster of curved volumes clad in about 33,000 wafer-thin titanium panels, which change colour with the light and rain, alternating with limestone blocks and large glass walls. From the river it recalls a ship or a fish; from above, a flower. Gehry used aerospace software, CATIA, to calculate shapes impossible to draw by hand. Inside, the atrium, over 50 metres high, distributes galleries on three floors.
The works
- The Matter of Time by Richard Serra: eight huge weathering-steel sculptures in spirals and ellipses that you walk through, in the museum's largest gallery, over 130 metres long.
- Puppy by Jeff Koons: the 12-metre dog covered in thousands of flowers, changed with the seasons, in front of the entrance, now the city's symbol.
- Maman by Louise Bourgeois: the giant bronze spider on the riverside promenade.
- Tall Tree and the Eye by Anish Kapoor, a column of mirrored spheres in the pond.
- Fujiko Nakaya's Fog Sculpture, a cloud of artificial mist, and Yves Klein's Fire Fountain.
- Works from the contemporary collection, including Rothko, de Kooning, Warhol, Basquiat, Chillida and Tàpies, shown in rotation.
The museum mainly hosts temporary exhibitions of major twentieth-century and contemporary artists and movements.
Practical information
- The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, daily in summer; it closes on some holidays.
- Buy tickets online; the audio guide is included. Combined tickets with the Fine Arts Museum are available.
- Allow at least two or three hours, plus time to walk around the building, which should be seen from several viewpoints: La Salve bridge, the Pedro Arrupe footbridge and Artxanda hill.
- The museum's Nerua restaurant has a Michelin star; there is also a bistro.
See also modern and contemporary art in Spain.