BARCELONA
Locals in Bilbao say
an art museum helped save their Spanish city from decline. Now they are
glad to know their saviour, the Guggenheim, will be staying for some
time.
With the initial lease set to expire, the
US-based Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation on December 9 announced it was
signing on to run its museum in the northern port city for another 20
years.
That was double the period previously envisaged
for the new contract, and for those involved it was another sign that
the museum satellite is a winning formula.
The northern
Basque port was a run-down mess in the early 1990s before the
contemporary art museum ensconced itself there in its scaly titanium
building, local leaders say.
"It is a real miracle that the Guggenheim is in Bilbao. This was a junk yard before," said the city's mayor Ibon Areso.
The
Rothkos and Warhols hung from the museum's walls have helped give the
city new life — and others across the world are following its example.
"This
strategy was driven by globalisation. It was very new at the time, but
now it is being replicated," said Lluis Bonet, a specialist in cultural
management at Barcelona University.
Apart from their
New York base, the Guggenheims had already opened a collection in Venice
and are now planning a new museum in Abu Dhabi.
Numerous
other big museums are planning their own satellites as well, including
several in Spain, a country slowly recovering from recession.
The
Louvre has branched out from Paris to Abu Dhabi and to the northern
French town of Lens. Paris's Pompidou Centre is planning to open a venue
in Malaga, southern Spain.
In Russia, Saint Petersburg's Hermitage museum has announced plans for a branch in Barcelona.
'Bilbao effect'
The
banks of Bilbao's Nervion river were grotty and dirty, dotted with
abandoned factories before the project was launched that led to the
Guggenheim opening in 1997.
"We were in a terrible
state. There was high unemployment, industries had shut down, there were
lots of drugs and the city hadn't been cleaned up for many years," said
Inaki Esteban, author of a book, The Guggenheim Effect.
The
$170-million (more than 130-million-euro) museum was part of a plan to
transform the city and diversify its economy, but it was controversial
at the time.
"People didn't see how a museum could be an economic motor," Esteban said.
Now
the area is brightly lit with parks and bicycle lanes woven around the
ship-shaped metallic museum building designed by Canadian-born US
architect Frank Gehry.
Seventeen million visitors have
come through its doors and hotel stays in Bilbao have soared as
foreigners have flocked to the city.
The Guggenheim
directly or indirectly employs 5,000 people, and has brought in three
and a half billion euros ($4.3 billion) in revenues to the region,
officials say.
Bilbao had historically been one of
Spain's most prosperous cities, but it had declined along with its heavy
industries and shipyards.
Within a year of the museum
opening, it had generated 144 million euros ($186 million) for the
Basque region, and its unemployment rate has decreased to one of the
lowest in Spain.
"The Guggenheim was a great success
but it was not an isolated initiative. It was part of wider urban
regeneration. They improved the port and built an underground train
system," said Guillermo Dorronsoro, head of the business school at
Bilbao's Deusto University.
Other cities have since imitated the "Bilbao effect" though not all have succeeded, mayor Areso said.
"There
is much more to it than just putting a museum there. Bilbao's
transformation would have been possible even without the Guggenheim. But
we wouldn't have become so well-known internationally."
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