ARTISTIC LICENCE GUGGENHEIM DRIVER
ARTISTIC LICENCE GUGGENHEIM PLUS

Frankfurt, Glasgow and Pittsburgh had striven to raise themselves with culture and/or museum-building. It was not a wholly new set of ideas – Sydney, indeed, had demonstrated the value of the transformative landmark, as had Paris with the Pompidou Centre. Our town is dying.’ I looked at them and said: ‘Where’s the nearest exit? I’ll do my best but I can’t guarantee anything.’” So he came up with the convulsive, majestic, climactic assembly of titanium and stone, of heft and shimmer, a cross-breed of palazzo and ship that also flips its tail like a jumping fish, that now stands on the bank of the river Nervión. “They said: ‘Mr Gehry, we need the Sydney Opera House. Gehry, who beat two other architects in the competition to design the building, recalls that he was asked to design what was then not called an icon. It has been rewarded with a steady million visitors a year, the 20 millionth having arrived shortly before the 20th birthday.

ARTISTIC LICENCE GUGGENHEIM DRIVER

It was to be “a driver of economic renewal”, an “agent of economic development” that would appeal to a “universal audience”, create a “positive image” and “reinforce self-esteem”. Juan Ignacio Vidarte, the museum’s director, whose involvement dates back to the time of its inception in the early 90s, says that it was meant to be “a transformational project”, a catalyst for a wider plan to turn around an industrial city in decline and afflicted by Basque separatist terrorism. This is probably because it came about through a coincidence of conditions that is unlikely to happen again.ĭespite Gehry’s protestations of surprise, it is a project that has fulfilled its original intentions with precision. Yet rarely, if ever, have the myriad wannabe Bilbaos matched the original. It is the father of “iconic” architecture, the prolific progenitor of countless odd-shaped buildings the world over.

ARTISTIC LICENCE GUGGENHEIM PLUS

It has given its name to the “Bilbao effect” – a phenomenon whereby cultural investment plus showy architecture is supposed to equal economic uplift for cities down on their luck.

The museum was opened 20 years ago this month, by the king and queen of Spain, since when it has become the most influential building of modern times.

It revived belief that architecture could be ambitious, beautiful and popular all at once, yet Gehry has always said that its success took him by surprise. Its achievement, measured in much-repeated metrics of visitor numbers and economic uplift, in global recognition and media coverage, in being, in effect, an Instagram sensation long before anyone knew what that might be, is prodigious. I thought: ‘What the fuck have I done to these people?’” The “it” is the Bilbao Guggenheim museum, which made both its architect Gehry and the Basque city world-famous. When he got to Bilbao a month before it opened, says Frank Gehry, “I went over the hill and saw it shining there.

Artistic licence guggenheim