Bilbao, the Basque country
Guests arrived and guests departed. All were touched by the dramatic presence of the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum. A high level view allowed our guides to describe the cityscape with its former industrial zones strung-out alongside the river. It is this heritage of a traditional economic base of ship-building and heavy industry which was severely eroded in the 1980s. And it is this legacy of abandoned factory sites and marshalling yards that set Gehry’s project to build a world-renowned museum in context.
The gallery space, with curving walls and one clear span exhibition zone of 450 feet and a ceiling twenty-three feet high, requires big art (on the occasion of our visit, a Serra snake of steel) open to engagement. This is the character of the current multiple shows: participation. We all lay down beneath the awning of a stylized tent, a work which teased and tempted the senses with colored light-play. Elsewhere, a bank of television screens were the backdrop to goldfish aquaria, an installation by Nam June Paik. Who was looking at whom?
Much has been written on the packaging that makes up this latest Guggenheim global-art venue. It has most certainly placed Bilbao and the Basque country, culturally, front-of-stage. But does the richness of the container cause confusion, a preference for the packaging diminish the content? And if the regional public purse contributed $20 million where exactly is the Basque identity? Is this what the global museum is about?
Guests arrived and guests departed. All were touched by the dramatic presence of the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum. A high level view allowed our guides to describe the cityscape with its former industrial zones strung-out alongside the river. It is this heritage of a traditional economic base of ship-building and heavy industry which was severely eroded in the 1980s. And it is this legacy of abandoned factory sites and marshalling yards that set Gehry’s project to build a world-renowned museum in context.
The gallery space, with curving walls and one clear span exhibition zone of 450 feet and a ceiling twenty-three feet high, requires big art (on the occasion of our visit, a Serra snake of steel) open to engagement. This is the character of the current multiple shows: participation. We all lay down beneath the awning of a stylized tent, a work which teased and tempted the senses with colored light-play. Elsewhere, a bank of television screens were the backdrop to goldfish aquaria, an installation by Nam June Paik. Who was looking at whom?
Much has been written on the packaging that makes up this latest Guggenheim global-art venue. It has most certainly placed Bilbao and the Basque country, culturally, front-of-stage. But does the richness of the container cause confusion, a preference for the packaging diminish the content? And if the regional public purse contributed $20 million where exactly is the Basque identity? Is this what the global museum is about?
