The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao: A Museum Wake Up A City

When looking at the gleaming Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, it's hard to imagine that 20 years ago, there was just a scrap of deserted industrial land. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao located in Basque, Bilbao, which is the landmark building of this city.

（the outside of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao)

Why we need care about the cultural institutions in a city? When taking for this class, this question is one of the most critical that haunted me. When I know the relationship between the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Spanish city Bilbao, I begin to realize that the cultural institutions not only could express the spirit of one city, but they are mutually beneficial.

Bilbao was the fourth largest city in Spain. But in the 1980s, due to the decline of the steel industry and the loss of ship industry, the city began to wane. That has prompted the government began to implement an improvement plan in 1991. That plan looks like a gamble at that time.

The Bilbao government reported that Bilbao had spent nearly $230 million to build the Guggenheim Museum in 2007. At the beginning of the project, it was questioned by all sides, especially from New York. Few people think this reinforced concrete structured building will succeed, let alone revitalize an old industrial city.

But since the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opening in 1997, it has paid off handsomely. It just used 3 years to recoup the costs of the building. Besides, it instantly attracted worldwide attention with its beautiful shape, unique structure, and new materials.It was hailed as "a futuristic building that came to the world, not in a city poem written in the language of the earth."

And now the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao has hosted more than 160 contemporary and contemporary art exhibitions, attracting 20 million visitors to the city of 350,000, with 60 percent of them coming from overseas. At the same time, it has created 5,000 local jobs and generated $650 million in revenue for Bilbao.

（the modern inside design of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao)

Richard Armstrong, the current director of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao said that “Guggenheim Museum Bilbao not only transformed people’s perception of the city but also changed the city's orientation of itself.” The great success of Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is that it not only shows the great influence of visual arts on a city but also actively changes its development orientation of itself.

The successful of Bilbao proves to the world that if there are good environments and strongly supports, the museum of art will not only enrich the cultural life of the city but also bring economic vitality to the world.

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. https://www.guggenheim.org/about-us

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