An American couple, a Scot, an Irish couple, an Australian couple and a Basque walk in to a pub (tour)…

 

Bilbao by the sea.

 

The Guggenheim Museum features the work of…..

 The Guggenheim Museum features the works of Ruth Asawa and Richard Serra. Ironically or was it a curatorial reflection on the source of the Guggenheim fortune that both works rely  on the profound nature of metal to express their personal and artistic feelings. 

Richard Serra

Serra’s work is at home in this unique area of the museum that requires work that is able to challenge the dimensions of the space.  His work is monumental and seeks to alter perceptions of space and proportion’. 

Ruth Asawa

“An artist is an ordinary person who can take ordinary things and make them special”. 

Asawa’s work  hangs patiently in the air providing shadows of their inner self. It is their fragility though no doubt inner strength as a metal that provides an insight into the unique experiences of Asawa as a Japanese American.

Bilbao buzz!

 

The Guggenheim Museum lands in Bilbao: Artitecture!

It explodes from the earth with rocks exploding in the air and landing between land a river. It’s a cacophony of shapes and materials and sits on a river and surrounded by water to no doubt cool the explosion. It’s a site for the sight and is surrounded by an expansive area that allows viewers to wander aimlessly until they find the entrance stairs and climb and enter into the interior of what is one of the world's most iconic museums. 

Frank Gehry has created a structure (almost a building) that on the outside expresses power and energy and an interior that is awesome. It is soaring with walkways that traverse each its three levels They hang in air along with the white clouds that provide the structure that hold y up this extraordinary building 

The gallery spaces for art are neutral in contrast providing the white boxes that exhibit the art and not continue the spectacle of the building. You walk into the gallery spaces and are consumed not by by the scale of the spaces but the art that can breathe and speak as loudly as the building itself. 

The so called “mining to modern art" transition turned industrial profits into the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The Guggenheim fortune was built on a massive late-19th-century global mining and smelting empire, primarily in silver, lead, and copper. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is one of three along with New York City and Venice. It was opened in 1997 and has changed the landscape and the economic and social regeneration of the city of Bilbao and its environs. 

Today the museum features the Museum’s Collection of key art figures and movements from the second half of the 20th century, such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Yves Klein, Jeff Koons, Antoni Tàpies, Cy Twombly, or Andy Warhol, and has introduced different styles and names, such as  Hanne Darboven, Al Held, Damien Hirst, Martin Kippenberger, and Robert Ryman. This is a powerful collection and reflects a unique connection between artists, movements, and eras.