The Basque History of the World - Mark Kurlansky [141]
Included in the five-point plan were cleaning up the pollution from the old industry, cleaning the river, separating industry from the center city, expanding the subway system and the airport, building more bridges, enhancing technology and managerial programs in the universities, building new industries . . . After looking at the city plans, the $100 million for the museum does not seem as shocking. But only number five of the city’s five-point plan mentions anything about cultural attractions.
From the PNV point of view, Frank Gehry was the perfect architect for the project. In his sixties, he had become the international architect of the moment based on several major projects in the U.S. Midwest, the American Center in Paris, and an office building in Prague. He also was smitten with Basque country and expressed a personal affection for things Basque, though this was not necessarily reflected in his work. The last thing the PNV wanted was something uniquely Basque. The party wanted something international. The other appealing thing about Gehry was that he had garnered a reputation as a sculptor. His buildings were said to be works of art in themselves. He told the Basques that if he did a museum, he would regard the building itself as more important than the work in it.
That was what the Basques wanted: an important building. What they got was a fanciful-looking structure of curves and tilts, at the base of the mountains, seen at the end of Iparraguirre Street, the long straight avenue of blackening nineteenth-century architecture named to honor the author of “Tree of Guernica.”
The structure has neither the grace nor the originality of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim in New York but seems to almost subconsciously pay homage to that famous softly tapered spiral. As promised, it is more a sculpture than a building. Though interesting to look at from the outside, it offers no new ideas about museum architecture. Inside, the exhibition space may have the boldness but not the fluidity of the Wright building. As in a French airport, you are never exactly sure where to go. It does not have the sense of humor of the Pompidou Center. Nor does it have the traffic. Contrary to the publicity, it did not seem crowded its first year. About 50 percent of the visitors, according to museum figures, were Basques. Basque families, the men in floppy, dark blue berets, wandered through.
But while the foreign press had predicted huge crowds of international tourists, this had never been the stated goal of the PNV, nor is tourism a priority in the plans for the city. The Basque Nationalist Party got what it wanted when the New York Times architecture critic, Herbert Muschamp, called the museum “the most important building yet completed” by Gehry.
The most intriguing side of the Bilbao Guggenheim is the back. Set against a man-made pond, the shiny titanium structures look like a cartoon port, the sort of place where tugboats with big smiles might dock. The traffic speeding over the high, green La Salve Bridge, across the Nervión, appears to be getting swallowed by this titanium monster. Below on the other side is the infamous Cuartel de la Salve, a Guardia Civil station conspicuous for its Spanish flag, a rare sight in Basqueland. Two heavily armed guards stand in front with bulky bulletproof protection, looking unhappy to be there.
When asked for her opinion, a woman who lived in the neighborhood near the Guggenheim said, “I don’t know anything about modern art,” which is what Arzalluz also said. A law professor at Deusto, the university that is also just across the river from the museum, Arzalluz passes by twice a day and looks at the Guggenheim. “I like it more each time,” he said.
Did that mean he did not like it at first?
“No, no, I liked it. But it’s not that I wanted a Gehry building. We are not modern architecture experts.”
Most of the non-nationalist parties were strongly against the project but lacked the votes to stop it. Once it was built, most criticism ended. One of the building’s accomplishments