"Maker of world-class art museums" (Krens and Guggenheim Bilbao), The Art Newspaper, Oct. 1997, p. 15.

The globalised Guggenheim blossoms in Bilbao

by Jason Edward Kaufman

NEW YORK/BILBAO. The Basque Country on the northeast Atlantic coast of Spain along the mountainous border with France, has long been known for headline-grabbing terrorist actions by rebel separatists seeking independence from Madrid. Even as those disturbances continue, the semi-autonomous region is undergoing upheavals of a more sweeping character likely to overwhelm the increasingly rare disruptions of the communist-leaning ETA (the initials stand for Euzkadi ta Azkatasuna -- "Basque Homeland and Liberty in the native language). The leaders of this grander revolution are businessmen and politicians, many of whom share a desire for Basque independence, but seek change through economic progress rather than violence.

In 1989 leaders of the Basque regional and Biscay provincial governments, with support from the Spanish state, the European Community, and local corporate and private sponsors, formed a consortium to fund monumental public projects which would catalyse a commercial and cultural renaissance in Bilbao, Spain's fourth largest city and home to nearly half the 2.3 million Basques. To facilitate the transition, they are spending about $1.5 billion on infrastructural enhancements that will renew the urban fabric of Bilbao by the year 2000, the city's 700th anniversary.

Among the projects already completed are subway stations designed by the late Sir Norman Foster and a river-spanning footbridge by Santiago Calatrava. A concert hall and convention center designed by Federico Soriano & Dolores Palacios is scheduled to open next year, and a terminal at Sondica International Airport by Calatrava is slated for completion in 1999. A transportation hub for trains, subways, and buses designed by Michael Wilford has been delayed along with a proposed bullet-train system that would link the region to Madrid and the French railways. But the centerpiece of the initiative is the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (GMB), a sprawling 250,000-sf center for modern and contemporary art designed by Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry [see interview page NUMBER?] which opens to the public this month with a 300-work survey "Twentieth-century Art: Masterpieces from the Guggenheim Collection" (Oct. 18- Feb. 1998).

Straddling the Nervión River just inland from the Bay of Biscay, nestled in a valley ringed by verdant hills, the Cantabrian port of Bilbao was once the principal commercial point of entry into the Iberian peninsula. But the city's prosperity followed the decline of its maritime and manufacturing industries, converting the once-thriving community into an economic and cultural backwater. Though an unlikely partner for The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF), whose collection of twentieth-century masterpieces graces museums in Manhattan's ritzy Upper East Side and tony SoHo neighborhoods, not to mention romantic Venice, the Basques' desire for a cultural showcase dovetailed nicely with the Guggenheim's quest for global expansion.

In 1991, the Basque consortium approached the SRGF with an offer to create a modern art museum in Bilbao. Within months the parties signed a 20-year contract (renewable for 75 years) whereby the Basque regional and provincial governments, working through the consortium, would provide $100 million for construction, $50 million for the development of a collection, funds for the longterm operation of the museum, and $20 million to the SRGF (paid in two installments in 1992 and 1993). The Guggenheim would provide its curatorial and administrative expertise, a rotating selection from its permanent collection, and programming including at least three exhibitions a year comparable to those mounted in New York. The GMB would retain profits from ticket and retail sales, and enjoy exclusive rights to sell Guggenheim products throughout Spain.

Though sharply criticised at home for the secrecy in which the deal was negotiated, as well as for the extraordinary cost and for its reliance on American know-how, Gehry's audaciously modern invention, with its glinting metal-clad sculptural design -- a work of art itself -- has been heaped with superlatives by critics and colleagues around the globe. Culture minister M. Karmen Garmendia proclaims, "The new museum will be a landmark, a signature for our city that will be recognised across Europe and the World [and] a statement of the Basque region's intention to play an active role in the cultural and commercial development of the European community."

Indeed, for the Basques, the project is as much a political intiatiative as a cultural one. On the one hand, the partnership with a foreign institution tends to underscore and reinforce Basque independence from the Spanish state. On the other, as Basque president and Nationalist Party chief Jose Antonio Ardanza stated at the 1993 groundbreaking, the collaboration signals a departure from the region's traditional isolationism. "We are not insular, but open to the world," he declared, "strengthened by our relationship with an internationally renowned foundation." From the American perspective, the rewards are no less great, for the GMB adds another European outlet for the Guggenheim's collections and exhibitions, as well as a sizeable cash contribution to their coffers, and a veritable windfall of international media attention.

Will the GMB prove a success? A 1992 study projected annual income of $14 million, about half from private sources, and annual attendance of more than a half a million, about half from the region and the rest from Spain and elsewhere. It estimated the economic impact to reach $35 million per year, generating $4 million in taxes. Critics doubt the validity of the projections, citing the region's underdeveloped art resources and audience, Spain's lack of a tradition of private support, and the city's poor tourist appeal. When the Guggenmheim recently sent sample shows of twentieth-century art from its collection to venues in Bilbao (the SRGF received $1 million each for two shows), the surveys drew a total of barely 100,000 visitors, which may be an indication of the difficult road ahead. But the Basques are banking on the Gehry masterpiece and the prestigious Guggenheim name pulling in the crowds. In the management contract signed in 1994, they precluded the SRGF's opening any other museum in Europe without Basque consent, except an Austrian proposal which was pending at the time.

A chronicle of international dealmaking

The GMB owes as much to the radicalism of SRGF director Thomas Krens as it does to the enthusiasm of the Basques -- maybe more. In his nine years as SRGF director -- a position that puts him in charge of Guggenheim museums in New York and Venice -- he has waged an ambitious campaign to find architecturally significant spaces in which to exhibit the 6,000-piece collection. Critics assailed his drive to expand at a time when the institution's shaky finances were precipitating last-minute rescheduling of unfunded exhibitions, and seemed insufficient to properly run even the existing museum alone. But as former trustee Arthur Levitt Jr., who once headed the American Stock Exchange, has noted, "Any businessman today understands the importance of globalisation in our society. [Krens] was one of the first to capitalise on that."

In 1990-92 he closed the Frank Lloyd Wright flagship in order to renovate the building and add a ten-story adjoining tower (Gwathmey Siegel), financing the project with a $54.9-million bond issue which led to lay offs, reduced hours, and cancellations of exhibitions. Conservatives cringed when he auctioned off paintings by Kandinsky, Chagall, and Modigliani (for $47 million) to finance the 1990 acquisition of Count Panza di Biumo's collection of some 200-odd works by fifteen American minimalists and conceptualists including Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Robert Ryman, and Richard Serra. The acquisition of these large-scale pieces only exacerbated the museum's space shortage, and, despite annual debt service equal to more than one third of the $20-millon endowment, Krens convinced the trustees to commence an $8-million 30,000-sf branch in three leased floors of a loft building in SoHo (Arata Isozaki), which went over budget before partially opening in 1992. According to a SRGF spokesperson, there is no intention to expand further in NY, though additional storeys of the SoHo building may be converted to exhibition space. Then in 1995 Krens renovated the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice (Leila and Massimo Vignelli) and enlarged the garden.

Concurrent with these undertakings, the Guggenheim became positively promiscuous, pursuing relationships with governments and corporations around the world, particularly in Europe. The SRGF's first prospective outpost was the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASSMoCA) in North Adams, a scheme conceived by Krens in the mid-1980s when he was director of the nearby Williams College Museum of Art. The plan was to convert a 28-building 750,000-sf textile factory into the world's largest venue for contemporary art. The State's democratic governor at the time earmarked $35 million for the project, but his Republican successor froze the funds until the fledgling institution demonstrated its ability to raise funds privately. About half the State funds have been disbursed, and the plan is inching along under the direction of Krens's former student Joseph Thompson, who hopes to open the site as a multi-disciplinary art center next year. The Guggenheim has indicated that if suitable exhibition space is created, they may be interested in lending large-scale postwar artworks, such as those from the Panza Collection. But at this point there is no plan to establish a formal relationship.

Another opportunity arose in 1988 when a group of citizens in Salzburg proposed founding a Guggenheim branch in the Austrian city. Krens rejected the plan until they presented a remarkable design by Hans Hollein for a 100,000-sf subterranean museum carved directly into the rock of the Monchsberg, Salzburg's most prominent topographical feature. The $80-million project was to be financed by the city, but shifting political tides scuttled the scheme. "It's not officially over," says a SRGF spokesperson, "but it doesn't have the necessary forces rallying for it."

Then in 1990, former trustee Akira Tobishima, head of the eponymous Japanese engineering corporation, pledged $5 million to the SRGF and declared his desire to help "the Guggenheim come to Tokyo as part of their global expansion." Negotiations were said to have taken place, but according to a spokesperson no plan is currently under consideration for a Tokyo branch.

The following year the SRGF entered into the agreement that led to the GMB. The Basque connection was fostered early on by Carmen Giménez, a prominent Spanish curator whom Krens met in 1988 when she was exhibition director for Spain's Ministry of Culture. He hired her in 1989 and two years later she led the search for a Guggenheim satellite in Spain. Works from the collection were sent on an emissary tour to several Spanish cities, and negotiations commenced with Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Badajoz, Bilbao, and the northern coastal resort of Santander, which was an early favorite until the well funded Basque redevelopment consortium won out.

Then at the 1995 Venice Biennale, the SRGF announced plans to create Guggenheim-operated museums at three sites: the American and Italian Pavilions in the Giardini, the Magazzini dei Sale on the Zattere, and the customs warehouse on the Punta de la Dogana. Each would be overseen by the city with programming provided by the Guggenheim, whose Peggy Guggenheim Collection on the Grand Canal administers the US Pavilion in the Biennale grounds. Ownership disputes and other issues have stalled negotiations, but the project is still alive.

As those negotiations continued, in Spring of this year, the SRGF and Deutsche Bank announced plans to create the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, an exhibition hall in the ground floor of the bank's newly restored pre-War headquarters on Unter den Linden near the Brandenburg Gate. Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin will be supported entirely by the bank, with programming provided by the Guggenheim. The roughly 5,000-square-foot one-room gallery, replete with a cafe and shop, is designed by New York architect Richard Gluckman. The Guggenheim will organise three shows per year, two of which will be site-specific works commissioned by Deutsche Bank for its collection of contemporary art. An exhibition of Robert Delaunay's serial paintings inaugurates the space (Nov. 7-Jan. 4, 1998) and will travel to New York (Jan. 16-April 20, 1998). An installation by James Rosenquist follows in May. Deutsche Bank has sponsored several Guggenheim exhibitions in New York, most recently "Max Beckmann in Exile" at the SoHo branch.

Finally, the Guggenheim will soon announce an agreement with Samsung to provide administrative and curatorial expertise to the company-sponsored Ho-Am Museum in Seoul. In return, the electronics giant will provide unspecified financial support to the Guggenheim, joining Deutsche Bank as one of the museum's five corporate Global Partners [see SRGF article this page]. A spokesperson for the Guggenheim says there will be no new construction, and it is uncertain that Guggenheim-organised exhibitions would travel to the institution.

A museum network to share collections and shows

Krens's globalism means that the Guggenheim will have access to a larger body of art -- what he sees as "a series of collections jointly shared by the institutions." Furthermore, exhibitions could stay within the Guggenheim orbit, and yet reach audiences around the world, with Bilbao as the European anchor, and the smaller branches in Venice and Berlin potential added venues. This is illustrated by the fact that many of the exhibitions slated for Bilbao will originate elsewhere within the Guggenheim network. For example, although not yet confirmed, the February slot may be filled by the modern sculpture collection of Dallas developer Raymond Nasher, shown at the Reina Sofia in 1988 and earlier this year at the Guggenheim in New York. It will be followed by China: 5,000 Years and the Rauschenberg retrospective, both of which originated in New York.

Eventually Bilbao will host exhibitions organised by museums other than the Guggenheim, as well, but none is scheduled.

Projects yet to be confirmed include a Francesco Clemente retrospective curated by Lisa Dennison, Latin American and Mexican art curated by Carmen Giménez, Helen Frankenthaler's early work, multi-media art co-organised with the ZKM Center for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe, 20th-century French art co-organised with the Pompidou Centre, the Warhol Factory, Painting around the year 1900 or Picasso and War: 1937-1947, curated by Robert Rosenblum, a Richard Serra retrospective co-organised with the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, a James Rosenquist retrospective, a futurism survey, and smaller shows -- with many to visit other Guggenheim venues as well.

Critics contend that by spreading its collections around the globe, the Guggenheim will slight its New York audience and endanger the art. But only a fraction of the permanent collection is ever on view in New York, and touring shows already are a constant feature of the SRGF program. In the last ten years they have sent the collection to some 75 cities on five continents, always at the expense of the host institution which pays a fee to the Guggenheim. In fact, the inaugural show in Bilbao is a version of a permanent-collection survey that has been on tour in the Far East since 1996, visiting Seoul, Singapore, Dunedin (New Zealand), Shanghai, and continuing on after Bilbao to Taipei in March 1998. Similar exhibitions have been to Venice, Madrid, Tokyo, Sydney, Montreal, Helsinki, and elsewhere. With an eye toward potential collaborations, Krens regards these loans as a form of "relationship building."

At its New York venues, the Guggenheim in recent years has mounted shows of Ross Bleckner, Jenny Holzer, Rebecca Horn, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenberg, and others, as well as ambitious surveys of Russian early avant-garde and Italian postwar art. In addition, the museum has addressed areas outside the traditional parameters of its modernist interests, including masterpiece of African art and the forthcoming blockbuster China: 5,000 Years. The initial idea for the Africa show was to provide an historical context for today's African art, but the contemporary coda was limited to a photography survey. The China show should include a more extensive look at contemporary art in the country." According to a spokesperson, there are no pre-modern or non-Western projects in development, but there may be in the future.

Projects yet to be confirmed include a Francesco Clemente retrospective curated by Lisa Dennison, Latin American and Mexican art curated by Carmen Giménez, Helen Frankenthaler's early work, multi-media art co-organised with the ZKM Xewnter for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe, 20th-century French art co-organised with the Pompidou Centre, the Warhol Factory, Painting around the year 1900 or Picasso and War: 1937-1947, curated by Robert Rosenblum, a Richard Serra retrospective co-organised with the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, a James Rosenquist retrospective, a futurism survey, and smaller shows -- each of which may visit one or more stars in the Guggenheim's newly global constellation.

Jason Edward Kaufman ©