This is not a museum: The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

My dissertation investigates the changing urban landscape of the greater metropolitan area of the city of Bilbao in the province of Biscay in the autonomous community of the Basque Country of northwestern Spain using the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao as the focal point. An examination of the following components assists in the analysis of the confluence of particular events and the phenomenon of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao: the economic dynamic of a postindustrial area in decline and the plan to revitalize it; the artistic, literary, and intellectual perspectives; the new concept of the museum that participates in the encompassing notion of consumerism, the media, and globalization; and the architecture of the Los Angeles-based architect Frank Gehry. Efforts by public entities such as the Basque Autonomous Government, the Provincial Council of Biscay, and the City Hall of Bilbao, together with semi-public and private entities such as Bilbao Metropoli-30 and Bilbao Ria 2000 as well as other organizations constituted the driving force behind the implementation of projects intended to revitalize Bilbao. This was the realization of a marriage of convenience between Bilbao officials and Thomas Krens, who was then the Director of the North American-based Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in search of establishing a European satellite. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao became an emblem of the city of Bilbao and a commercial and iconic model for international project development. Gehry's spectacular architecture drove the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao's resounding success. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao attracted attention globally as well as locally. The so-called "Guggenheim effect" or "Bilbao effect" seemed to have resuscitated confidence and esteem within Basque society and a sector of the art world. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao appeared in international references as the instrument of an urban and economic revitalization inasmuch as it became an innovative musem model. By looking at Bilbao's economic history as well as the artistic, literary, and intellectual perspectives including those of Miguel de Unamuno, Ignacio Zuloaga, Eduardo Chillida, and Jorge Oteiza, they provided visibly different variables and explored the probability of a set of relations that interconnected and that worked together and a city was found ripe for the instantiation of another of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation's satellite museums. The artistic, literary, and intellectual perspectives weave together the stories of Miguel de Unamuno and Ignacio Zuloaga of the Generation of '98, as well as those of Jorge Oteiza and Eduardo Chillida.