Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

This morning we left a misty Lourdes and travelled back into Spain into Basque Country. We had planned to have lunch in Bilbao but heard along the way that the whole city was on strike which meant that nothing was open and that there was going to be a mass demonstration in the city. We were assured that our destination of the Guggenheim Museum remained open.

We arrived in Bilbao around 3pm and we saw crowds of people leaving the city centre as the demonstration had finished. We stopped at a park in the old part of the city to have a picnic lunch before our guide took us on a tour of the city. Bilbao is the capital of Basque country and is located on the Bay of Biscay. It is the fourth largest city in Spain. In the late 1980's the Basque authorities embarked on major redevelopment plan for the city. Part of this redevelopment was securing the location of the next Guggenheim museum as the Guggenheim Foundation had been looking for a new location somewhere in Europe. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao was designed by Frank Gehry and opened in October 1997. The building is made of limestone, glass and titanium and the curves of the building were designed to catch the light. This building is truly spectacular! The building houses art by many Spanish and international artists. I loved the big ball sculpture outside and the reflective surface of it. I took a photo of one of the balls with my reflection in it. Out the front of the museum is a dog sculpture made of flowers. While in the museum we saw the work of David Hockney, an English artist that creates various vivid coloured landscape art works, some of which were originally created on ipads and then transferred onto paper. Guess what the kids at school are going to be doing!

Below are some pictures of an old church in Bilbao as well as some images of the Guggenheim Museum and the art installations outside.