Regional Renaissance: eight years after the opening of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the art scene in the Basque Country is thriving

Art in America, Nov, 2005 by Kim Bradley

As a measure of its importance, the formally approved Basque Master Plan for Culture was presented by none other than the Basque Country president, Juan Jose Ibarretxe, on Sept. 28, 2004, in Bilbao's Euskalduna Palace. Speaking to an enthusiastic arts audience, he praised it as "a navigational chart and compass for the Basque community." Observers could see that its authors and the Basque nationalist government share the same goal, despite their different motives. Basque visual-arts administrators recognize a new wave of emerging talent in the region and want to help it thrive; Basque nationalists believe it's essential to create, as the master plan states, "their own cultural space" differentiating the Basques from the Spanish and situating them within the world at large.

Perhaps another community would have made do with the Guggenheim's draw, but the Basques have gone forward with renewed energy. They have defined and achieved a broad consensus for long-term arts goals (the plan's mandate extends to 2015) and, to top if off, allocated $1.6 million just to launch the plan. For a region so recently marked by economic decline and conflict, the future certainly appears bright.

(1.) It is common for Basques and Spaniards to refer to the principal Basque cities in both Spanish and Basque (for example, Vitoria-Gasteiz, San Sebastian-Donostia), although the names for Bilbao are so similar that the Basque variant, Bilbo, is rarely used. American readers are probably most familiar with the Spanish-language geographical names, so those are used here.

(2.) The recent arts activities are almost too numerous to list. In San Sebastian, the Arteleku art institute underwent a major renovation; Sala Kubo, a not-for-profit gallery, opened in the Kursaal (Rafael Moneo's beautiful waterfront convention center); and city and provincial arts representatives announced a multimillion-dollar refurbishment of the San Telmo Museum (its diverse collections range from ethnological artifacts to regional modern art). That city also hosted the fifth edition of Manifesta, the European biennial of contemporary art [see A.i.A., Dec. '04]. In Vitoria, the Montehermosa exhibition center opened, and the Alava Fine Arts Museum was renovated and its collection rehung. Bilbao launched BilbaoArte, a much-needed, lively artists' residency center and gallery. The city also increased its support of Sala Rekalde, a key not-for-profit contemporary-art venue which added a new gallery devoted to projects by emerging artists.

(3.) For example, in recent years the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum's level of self-support has oscillated between 42 and 39 percent.

(4.) The GMB Activity Report 1997-2002 (p. 29) cites the figure as 775.7 million euros.

(5.) On Oct. 13, 1997, two ETA terrorists parked near the GMB's main entrance in a delivery van. They tried to unload several large flower planters supposedly for use in Jeff Koons's giant floral sculpture, Puppy, but actually hiding 12 grenades, various grenade launchers and two automatic rifles. When a policeman became suspicious of the unexpected delivery, the terrorists tried to escape on foot. One of them shot the officer, who died shortly afterward.