reflections on the space of flows: the guggenheim museum bilbao

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Reflections on the Spaceof Flows: The GuggenheimMuseum BilbaoMarjorie RauenPublished online: 31 Mar 2010.

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Reflections on the Space of Flows: The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

MARJORIE RAUEN

he Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (GMB) has focused international atten- T tion on a depressed and deteriorated industrial city in the Basque region of Spain. Greeted with almost unanimous enthusiasm and declared the defin- ing structure of late-twentieth-century architecture, the highly successful GMB has come to symbolize the economic regeneration of a dilapidated nine- teenth-century industrial region that, in recent years, had been most notable for the terrorist acts committed by a radical separatist group. The location of Frank 0. Gehry’s extraordinary building in such an unremarkable and incon- gruous site, however, consistently raises the question, from both its many admirers and its few detractors, of whether the GMB belongs-onceptually, physically, and politically-in Bilbao.

Does the “Guggenheim Bilbao sit [. . .] like a landed spaceship in one of the former industrial parts of the city” (Becker 1999,23), or does, “for all its iconoclastic energy, the museum sit [. . .] comfortably in gritty, industrial ter- rain surrounded by aging buildings, rail yards, bridges, and the waters of the Nervion River” (Henderson 1998,32)? Does this building address its context with ingenious sensitivity, andor is it out of scale and overwhelming? Is its strangeness in Bilbao problematic or brilliant and effective? Can an American museum in Bilbao reflect “Basqueness,” or is its presence there merely a new form of cultural imperialism? All manifestations of these questions, however, rely on traditional constructions of political and geographic locality to which the GMB only tentatively conforms. A more useful understanding of this building, and perhaps of the others that may follow, is gained by recognizing

Marjorie Rauen is a doctoral student in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society

how it belongs to and makes visible the new spatial logic of globalization- a spatial logic identified by sociologist Manual Castells as the “space of flows” (1996).

The “space of flows” describes the forms and processes that support global movement of information, capital, and control and that enable a new decen- tralized socio-economic structure. Essential to Castells’s theories of globalization is the premise that space is not a reflection but an expression of society (1996, 41 1); more specifically, the social practices that organize the forces of production and the interests of the dominant classes also organize built space and everyday life. By focusing on the Guggenheim museum, the material and narrative rebuilding of Bilbao is a story of the shift to a new realization of space in the late twentieth century.

Bilbao Background

Located in the northwest corner of the Iberian peninsula, Bilbao is the largest city of the semi-autonomous Basque region and the fourth largest city in Spain.‘ An ancient region boasting one of Europe’s few extant pre-Aryan languages, the Basque region was a highly prosperous center of the Industrial Revolution. Mining provided the basis for the first period of industrialization in the mid-lSOOs, whereas profits realized from the export of high-quality ore to England provided the capital for a second wave of economic development toward the end of the century. Steel mills were built in and around Bilbao, shipyards were constructed on the river Nervion, railway networks were developed to reach down the Iberian peninsula and up through the continent, and thriving insurance and banking enterprises grew to support these prosper- ing industries. With its industrial economy well-established, Bilbao enjoyed many decades of economic success.

Although the Spanish civil war did surprisingly little to alter the economic situation in Bilbao, protectionist policies during the first period of Franco’s dictatorship did not save the region from economic stagnation before and during the Second World War (Gomez 1998). The postwar era brought renewed economic prosperity (often referred to as the “Spanish Economic Miracle”) and another period of expansion lasting from the 1950s until the mid-1970s. After Franco’s death in 1975, however, Spain was slow in reacting to the gen- eral economic crises that were affecting all of western Europe; Bilbao’s aging steel and shipbuilding industries were not updated and became noncompeti- tive in the emerging global market, which resulted in multiple closures and a steady decline in the region’s industrial structure.

By the 1980s, Bilbao’s economy had slipped into depression. Saddled with unemployment rates as high as 25 percent by 1989, Bilbao city officials turned to strategic planning as a tool for the revitalization of the region. They

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secured the financial backing of the European Union, Spanish and Basque governments, and private investors, and they set in motion a plan to transform the region’s economic base from one dependent on heavy industry to one pro- pelled by advanced services, financial services in particular. The plan entailed not only the regeneration of Bilbao’s economic sector, but an overhaul of its urban infrastructure, its cultural resources, and its international image (Association for the Revitalization of Metropolitan Bilbao).

Bilbao’s regeneration was to cost $1.5 billion and unfold over a period of twenty years (this timetable would come to fluctuate). Projects undertaken would include a renovation and rebuilding of the existing roads, the rail routes, and the sewer system; a new telecommunications infrastructure; a relo- cated port; a new airport, bus terminal, high-speed railway, museum, performing arts center, and convention center; a high-tech industrial park; and an office and retail complex along the abandoned river front. Essential to the revitalization process were also the inclusion of high-profile architects with international reputations whose involvement would help focus world attention on activities in Bilbao, and a publicity strategy to present Bilbao’s new image to the world.

Although marketing strategies have in recent years become as common for regions, resorts, and municipalities as they are for more traditional consumer goods (Gomez), Bilbao’s revitalization plan faced a unique marketing chal- lenge. The Basque region already had an international image separate from that of a decaying industrialized city, and it was not an image that Bilbao’s conservatives or the ruling Basque Nationalist Party wished to project to would-be investors. The image was that of uncontained terrorism by a Basque separatist group called Euzkadi ta Azkatasuna (“Basque Homeland and Liberty”+x, more commonly, ETA-an underground group formed in 1968 to rebel against Franco’s repression of the ancient Basque language and culture.

The Basques, often described as fiercely independent, view themselves as a people apart from the Spanish; and the ETA in its early years took up an armed struggle to free their Basque homeland from Spanish rule. The ETA rebellion did not end with Franco, however. In fact, the vast majority of deaths related to ETA activities have occurred since Franco’s demise in 1975. “This has happened despite a gradual devolution of powers by successive demo- cratic governments in Madrid upon an increasingly autonomous regional administration in Basque country” (Came 1997b). The ETA has also main- tained a legitimate political arm called the Hem Batsuna, which commands enough of the vote in regional elections to demonstrate widespread support in the Basque territories for the ETA’S radical positions. Remembering the group’s original status as freedom fighters who stood up to Franco, even most conservative Basque citizens admit to some pro-ETA sentiment (Funes 1998), so any extreme measures taken against the ETA or Hem Batsuna over the

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years were met with large and vocal protests by local populations. At the same time, though, equally large and vocal gatherings were routinely staged to protest the bloodshed and kidnappings by the ETA.2

As the Basque officials prepared their urban renewal strategy in the late 1980s, they were in effect fighting two different but interdependent battles for image. On the larger front, they needed to replace international media reports of bombs and murder with more positive images. At home they were fighting for control of the region’s identity, needing to supplant the locally romanti- cized image of the independent, agrarian Basque freedom-seeker with one of their own: the image of bourgeois prosperity and vitality. In a complicated fashion, each battle would necessarily co-determine and influence the other. The fight for a stable and prosperous global image would depend on the conservative government’s ability to stop the bombings, whereas the fight to control local constructions of identity would be best won through the economic prosperity that a successful publicity campaign could help deliver.

The Guggenheirn Foundation

Since 1989, the story of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF) and Bilbao has been more accurately the story of Thomas Krens, the Guggenheim’s high-profile director who combines a background of art histo- ry, political science, and business. On assuming the SRGF directorship, Krens inherited the Guggenheim’s flagship building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright on Fifth Avenue in New York and Peggy Guggenheim’s villa in Venice. He also inherited a 10,OOO piece art collection, only a small fraction of which could be displayed in these two venues (Weideger 1998). Not only was the Guggenheim short on exhibition space, but the spiral galleries of the landmark Fifth Avenue museum were also proving unaccommodating to the display of the oversized artworks that comprised so many of the museum’s recent acquisitions. By 1991, Krens had secured a number of new, expensive collections, had initiated three major construction projects for the Gug- genheim, and had approached (ultimately unsuccessfully) numerous Euro- pean cities with the concept of satellite museums. These endeavors had also burdened the Foundation with more than $50 million of debt (Plagens 1996) and created dissent among the Guggenheim’s trustees, causing some of them to depart.g

Journalists describe Krens as a man who speaks of “economies of scale” when explaining why it is cost-effective to move exhibitions to multiple sites (Weideger 1998; Sansoni 1998)4 and who holds strong opinions about the multinational future of museums: “Cultures, nationalities and countries-the boundaries seem to be vanishing. The paradigm for me is to line up your institution with the international forces that are at work” (Weideger 1998). From

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the beginning, he appears to have sought, and he certainly received, attention from the established art press, much of it less than favorable. His global aspirations brought about accusations by his detractors of empire building (Bradley 1997); some ridiculed his proposed satellites, calling them “McGuggenheims” (Zulaika 1997); and his open commercialization of art exhibitions was met with derision: “The fear, of course, is that corporate logos will begin springing up inside the Guggenheim like patches on a pro’s tennis shirt” (Plagens 1996, 69). By the time Krens began negotiations in Spain, it appears that his credibility with the international art press, as well as with his own trustees, was in question.

The Deal

By 1991, Bilbao’s urban renovation project had been under way for two years. Work had begun on the Norman Foster-designed Metro, James Stirling was set to develop the central transport hub, Santiago Calatrava had been engaged to design the new airport and downtown pedestrian bridge, and Cesar Pelli and Associates had been chosen for the waterfront retail and residential complex. But, despite the international backgrounds and reputations that these architects brought to the Bilbao project, Bilbao’s publicity efforts were over- shadowed, even in their home country, by the upcoming World Exposition in Seville and the Olympics in Barcelona, both to take place in 1992.

Thomas Krens came to Madrid in 1991 with his Spanish-born curator of twentieth-century art, Carmen Gimenez, to oversee two exhibits: “Masterpieces from the Guggenheim” and a display of Kandinsky watercol- ors at the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya. At this time, Krens and Gimenez also began inquiries in numerous cities about the possibility of establishing a Spanish Guggenheim satellite. According to Art in America’s Kim Bradley (1997), their offers to the Reina Sofia in Madrid were rejected out of hand, as were their overtures toward Barcelona, Seville, and Badajoz, because the Guggenheim was unwilling to contribute to either the construction or the administrative costs of the new museum. Only the cities of Santander, a coastal resort, and Bilbao evinced real interest in securing a Guggenheim satellite. Santander, in fact, held an art symposium in honor of Krens’ visit and was the assumed front-runner in the negotiations until a surprise announce- ment was made on 30 September that the Guggenheim and Bilbao had signed a document of intent to create the GMB.

Some sources credit k e n s for the “seduction” of Bilbao (Zulaika 1997); others accuse Basque officials of bribing Krens to disregard offers from other Spanish cities (Bradley 1997). The partnership of Krens and the Basques in the deal that created the new Guggenheim museum, however, appears not to have been as one-sided as either of these accounts imply, for both parties had

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much to gain by the success of the project. The terms of the deal were very favorable for the Guggenheim foundation. SRGF would maintain complete artistic and administrative control over the new Bilbao museum, while the Basques (Bilbao city officials did not sign the contract with Krens, nor do they sit on the GMB Board [Bradley 19971) would pay for everything. Basque officials agreed to finance the entire operation, which included both the construction of the building (estimated at $100 million) and operating costs of the finished museum, plus provide a $50 million new acquisitions budget. (Estimates of the total cost to Bilbao have run as high as $250 million.) In addition, the Basques would donate $20 million to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation before the museum was even constructed-a dona- tion referred to in Spain as a “rental fee” (Bradley 1997).

The site of the museum, either by edict of Krens or suggestion of Gehry, depending on which of the many versions one reads (Jehlen 1999), was switched from an empty downtown warehouse chosen by a representative from the city of Bilbao to a derelict stretch of Nervion waterfront adjacent to downtown. In the summer of 1991, a competition between three architects chosen by Krens-Arata Isozaki, the Austrian firm Coop Himmelblau, and Frank 0. Gehry-was held for the museum’s design, and Gehry was declared the clear winner. Even at the stage of competition, Gehry’s undulating model began to attract the attention of the art world.

The Press

The Museum, not quite finished, is shaping up to be a masterpiece. . . .

(McGuigan 1997.68)

While Bilbao’s strategic plan, formulated in 1989, called for a number of different high level projects, development of cultural resources in the area was, at least at the outset, of no greater importance to the city planners than was the construction of a new airport or a modem sewer system. The museum was to be only one of the “arts and culture” projects slated for construction, and each individual project was part of a greater, overall scheme to create a high-profile post-industrial future for Bilbao.

Years before its completion, however, art and architecture magazines around the world suddenly focused their attention on Gehry’s remarkable building in Bilbao. In the spring of 1996, the Guggenheim opened the museum’s construction site for tours and soon thereafter Basque officials initiated a series of “lavish press junkets” (Bradley 1997) to expose their project to a wider press audience. Press activity intensified in the year leading up to the GMB’s grand opening in 1997 and expanded to include articles not only in the art and architecture press but also in international newspapers and widely read

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news weeklies, literary, travel, and fashion magazines; and even science and engineering publications. “Pilgrimages” were made to Bilbao before the construction was complete (Muschamp 1997); art and architecture critics “rushed to praise Gehry’s building, with many critics traveling to Bilbao even before the museum was far enough along to have any work of art installed” (Goldberger 1997,48).

Long before it was finished, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao was declared a masterpiece. There seem to have been many expectations that it should be, too. Krens claims that, when he offered Gehry the commission, he said, “It must be one of the greatest buildings of the twentieth century. You gotta beat him [Frank Lloyd Wright]” (Weideger 1998,42). The Basques also had high expectations. The extra $20 million payment to the Guggenheim foundation indicates how committed they were to the success of this particular undertaking. They were in need of a stand-out project for their plan that would lift Bilbao out of the deep public relations shadows recently cast by Seville and Barcelona. Fortunately for both Krens and the Basques, it also appears that the art world itself, and the American art community in particular, had been waiting for a masterpiece:

The miraculous Occurrence is the extravagant optimism that enters into the out- look of those who have made the pilgrimage. What if American art has not, after all, played itself out to its last entropic wheeze? What if standards of cultural achievement have not, irretrievably dissolved in the vast, tepid bath of relativi- ty, telemarketing and manipulated public opinions? (Muschamp 1997, 57)

The convergence of these multiple, complementary desires for attention appear to have brought about an almost instantaneous canonization of the Guggenheim Museum B i l b a ~ , ~ provoking international interest in the fourth largest city in Spain. The success of the building lent both credibility and power to those who were associated with the project. Not only did the museum move to the center of the Bilbao’s revitalization plan but also the publicity surrounding the museum began to drive the revitalization plan as much as the plan was driving the publicity. For its investment in infrastructure to be realized, Bilbao needed to insert itself into the world’s economic imagination: The flow of capital through Bilbao would depend on the flow of recognition. Bilbao wanted to be seen as a world player, but first it needed to be seen. The museum made Bilbao visible, and, in doing so, it also made visible a shift in the global organization of production.

The Space of Flows

Manuel Castells defines space as a materially constructed manifestation of simultaneous practices that, in a networked world, is no longer reliant on geo-

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graphic contiguity for its construction. Thanks to networked telecommunications, new global forms of space can exist outside and beyond physical locali- ties. Castells proposes that the global economy is based on flows of information and is organized around “command and control centers,” which coordinate networked activities around the globe (Castells 1996, 378). Although advanced telecommunication systems make it possible for command and control to be scattered globally, this in fact is not the configuration that has arisen. Instead, studies have shown that there is a pattern of simultaneous concentration and dis- persion in which can be traced a hierarchy of places (Cooke 1994; Cooke and Morgan 1993). However, as Castells notes, “this new global city phenomenon cannot be reduced to a few urban cores at the top of the hierarchy” (380); global functioning depends on other established centers and emerging regions for the control and coordination of trade and advanced services in the global economy. These regional centers also link to and depend on each other.

So, in this new global spatial order, cities do not vanish-in fact they become even more important centers because they have the critical population and economic mass to finance the telecodtransport infrastructure-while certain regions may also grow in importance, connecting to cities and to each other. But, except perhaps for the few mega-financial centers at the top, the hierarchy is unstable and subject to fierce competition (Castells 382). Networked global relationships, then, are part of a dynamic process that shifts according to the relative importance (to the overall hierarchy) of the business activities centered in different regions. The space of flows is as much about the creation, replication, and alteration of connections as it is about centers of production and consumption. It is always subject to change.

The space of flows comprises three layers. The first layer is the circuit of electronic impulses that forms the material support for the informational/glob- a1 economy . . . such as communications networks, broadcast systems, and computer processing capabilities. Castells includes high-speed transportation and the information technologies that enable it in this layer. This electronic grid makes possible new forms of global simultaneity that would not have been conceivable without them. “The technological infrastructure that builds up the network defines the new space, very much like railways defined ‘economic regions’ and ‘national markets’ in the industrial economy” (Castells 1996,412).

The second layer of the space of flows is defined by the geographic places that constitute its “nodes and hubs.” The hubs can simply be what Castells calls “exchangers”-places in which the main function is to facilitate communication and interaction within the flow of the network. Nodes in the space of flows are geographical areas where organizations of locally based enterprises play some sort of key function for the network as a whole. Taken together, these nodes and hubs constitute the processes that form the global economy.

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The third layer of the space of flows is the spatial organization of the interests of the dominant, managerial elites who “exercise the directional functions and around which such space is articulated” (Castells 1996, 415). Within nodes and hubs the elites organize their own separate enclaves, distancing themselves from a uniquely local identity while, at the same time, creating a type of universally recognizable, internationally homogenous space. Nodes in the space of flows, then, must provide the cultural and leisure resources that attract these managerial elites. Nodes must also construct a recognizable, even symbolic set of architectural/social/cultural/commercial places that keep them linked to their greater international networked identity (e.g., airports, luxury hotels, and cultural centers). The managerial elites can live in particular geographic environments and partake of their cultural or entertainment resources yet remain simultaneously abstracted from this particular locale and part of the global space of flows.

First Layer: The Electronic Grid and Transportation

Bilbao’s infrastructure overhaul, first and foremost, was designed to facilitate the space of flows. One can chart the projects in two columns, with the project name on one side and on the other the flow facilitated: a high-speed telecommunications infrastructure to support the flow of information and capital; a new airport for the flow of business travelers, tourists, documents, and packages; a new port for the flow of container shipping; a retooling of the Nervion basin for leisure boating; an overhaul of roads, buses, and railroads to keep regional flows moving; a new metro for the flow of labor; new pedestrian walkways for local circulation; a conference center for the flow of intel- lectual capital; a new performing arts center and new museum for the flow of international culture; even a new sewage system for the flow of human waste. The flows in Bilbao are symbolic as well. These projects are about the flow and projection of particular images: images of prosperity, images of vitality, images of political stability, and images of an interconnected and cosmopoli- tan world city.

The museum itself became not only a charismatic leading character in the narrative of Bilbao’s regeneration, it also emerged as an extremely potent symbol. Its functions are devoted to both economic and cultural flows: The museum’s architect hails from Los Angeles-exporter of hegemonic culture-and has strong ties to the Disney company; its collections will be curated, and its day-to-day activities will be administered from New York, center of world finance and symbolic work; its installations will travel from Guggenheims on one continent to Guggenheims on another. The building itself both instantiates and symbolizes flows, movement, and globalization. It is sited, intentionally, on the river Nervion, and a reflecting pool built near its

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entrance alludes to the flowing river below. It is intertwined with and symbolically linked to (through the construction of nonfunctional appendages) a railyard and a steel suspension bridge (La Puente de la Salve). Its form has been likened to the hull of a great ship, the wings of a plane, the sails of a schooner, and the waves of the ocean. Its cladding is titanium, a material most commonly used in airplane construction (Petroski 1998).

Three phenomena inspire the museum’s design: modernism, industrialization, and computerization. The museum’s architecture pays homage to modernist aesthetics, to cubism, expressionism, and the futurism of Sant’Elia (van Bruggen 1998). movements that became as multinational as the art that will flow through GMB’s exhibition halls. Its structure invokes the industrial shapes of the city around it-forms that are replicated in First and Second World cities the world over. Its alar forms were designed and constructed using CATIA, computer software developed for the aviation industry (Petroski, Stephens).

Second Layer: Nodes and Hubs

Insertion of an economy into the space of flows demands, above all, connectivity. The creation of nodes and hubs presupposes their links to other nodes and hubs in the network. To achieve its status as a member of a new, global spatial order, therefore, Bilbao’s first requirement was to provide, in every way possible, the means of joining itself to the grid(s). Few cities have gone about this process as systematically, strategically, and visibly as Bilbao. The new telecommunications infrastructure would provide not only global connectivity but also the backbone for all of the other high-profile projects: airport, metro, roads, railways, port, museum, arts center: Each of these projects is clearly part of an overall physical and symbolic process of connectivity; symbolic not only in the sense that electronic transfers of information and capital are symbolically represented but also in the sense that the presence of internationally famous designers for these projects would symbolize the global-connectedness of Bilbao.

Whether these projects will prove in the long term to establish Bilbao as a node in the space of flows remains to be seen-the construction of a high-tech industrial complex, for example, cannot guarantee that Bilbao will become a milieu of innovation.’ Nevertheless, the city does at present occupy positions in the global financial hierarchy. Its banking sector, the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya in particular, is not only one of the most active in Europe but also one that has pursued an aggressive program of acquisition in Latin America, placing it securely (at present) in the flow of multinational economies.* Banking, in particular, has been Bilbao’s most successful and most global industry. The mature banking sector guarantees the tax base that will fund the operating

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expenses of the new projects (Goldberger 1997) and has provided the successful international model that, in fact, forms the foundation on which other components of the plan are being built.

Although the banking industry in Bilbao is well established, the museum has also guaranteed that Bilbao will remain for the present on the international cultural map as well as within the flow of international imagination because, from the outset, the single most important flow to which the GMB connected Bilbao is to the flow of information. Sustained media attention keeps the museum, imd by extension the city of Bilbao, attached to multiple global discourses. While the material processes of Bilbao’s revitalization plan make the space of flows visible insofar as they document the shift to a new economic model as well as the construction of an infrastructure to support it, it is the press coverage of events in Bilbao that position Bilbao within an international flow of consciousness.

The type of urban renewal scheme that Bilbao formulated in 1989 certainly had many precedents, but, unlike any number of other cities or regions that have undertaken similar revitalization programs with global aspirations, Bilbao’s story was told, and it was told for a number of reasons. First, although perhaps not most important, Basque officials understood the importance of information flows; therefore, the Bilbao Ria-2000 program called for image promotion and management. The Basques certainly can be credited for bringing in an international group of famous architects to design their new facilities-a strategy that not only gave their projects a higher profile but also guaranteed them ample press coverage in the art and architecture journals of other countries. In other words, the story of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao became, at least in the U.S. press, as much of an American undertaking as it was a Basque or even a European one. Thomas Krens also understood the value of publicity; a high-profile project attracts corporate funding. “I like to guarantee my sponsors that I’m going to be on the front pages of all of the publications around the world constantly,” Krens laughs, “or the culture page of Time or Newsweek magazine four or five times a year” (Weideger 1998).

It helped as well that the story of events in Bilbao turned out to be jour- nalistically viable; in fact, it was a good story. Drawn to Bilbao by reports of an extraordinary building, journalists found numerous other elements of narrative interest: a down-and-out city attempting a comeback; a volatile political situation replete with romantic/villainous revolutionaries/terrorists; a multinational museum with a colorful and controversial director; a world- famous architect and an admirable building that was inspiring rhapsodic prose in the art and architecture press. Coincidentally, each of the elements of this story helped to reveal a narrative of infrastructure, flow, and globalization that some journalists made explicit to their readers.

Finally, the museum itself not only became a charismatic leading character

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in this narrative but also functioned symbolically. While the press could relate the many different stories of Bilbao and the Basques in reference to the GMB (stories that in many cases were accounts of globalization strategies), the GMB provided its own taught narrative of globalization, the story-within-the- story, which made it a multifaceted focal point. The new global economy that Bilbao’s revitalization program was attempting to establish could be depicted rather succinctly by focusing on this highly modem building, which was claimed by the Basques as a symbol of their culture yet was built by a Los Angeles architect and functioned as part of an international museum franchise administered from another continent. The museum gained celebrity status not simply because the Basques, Thomas Krens, or even Frank Gehry created it; celebrity was bestowed on the building, as it so often must be, by the international media. Future celebrity will be measured by the flow of tourists through its galleries, by the weekend occupancy rates in regional hotels, and perhaps, by the number of direct flights that international airports schedule to Bilbao.

Third Layer: Managerial Elites

In the largest sense, the entire Bilbao revitalization plan has been formulated according to the interests and the functions of its managerial elites. Bilbao has been reconceived and refashioned as a place for this particular group to conduct business. The new telecommunications infrastructure, high- tech industrial park, expanded port, conference center, and oftice and retail complex are geared to the needs of “technocratic-financial-managerial” society. In fact, just months after the grand opening of the GMB, the Basques placed a six-page advertisement in the Harvard Business Review extolling, among other things, their investment in infrastructure, banking, and finance industries; their fine gastronomic traditions; tax incentives; and their beautiful new museum.

On a local level, the provision of cultural amenities and creature comforts are also necessary for attracting this group who will keep the processes of globalization flowing. To this end, Bilbao has built expensive hotels to accom- modate the business traveler and linked itself to the luxury destinations of the region; one press junket arranged by the Basque officials was held in Santander with the express purpose of tying the museum to the seaside resorts: ‘ I . . . the GMB is seen as part of a range of amenities that can be enjoyed as one travels from Bilbao up the scenic coastline to San Sebastian and on to Biarritz. . . .” (Bradley 1997, 52). So, too, does the entire transportation infrastructure support the movement of products, supplies, and labor that are needed for the functioning of a luxury economy.

The museum and the performing arts center also were designed to provide the cultural backdrop necessary for the standard of living demanded by the

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elite inhabitants of a node on the space of flows. International newspapers now fill their travel sections with guides to Bilbao’s finest restaurants, restaurants that will support the social necessities of business luncheons and expense account entertainment. The auraticity of the GMB has become both a proven attractor and the single most important advertisement for Bilbao as a city of distinction and refinement. As Krens astutely notes: “Corporate executives who might not want to spend too long in Bilbao will be delighted to loi- ter over prosecco on the rooftop terrace at the Guggenheim. The more ambi- tious lenders and artists find the ballyhoo and glamorous locations magnetic, too” (Weideger 1998, 43). Corporate executives and artists alike will find needs filled by the museum’s presence in Bilbao.

The museum’s success, however, reveals it to be more than a mere backdrop amenity for the managerial elite. Krens’ rationale for establishing a major Guggenheim satellite in a previously unremarkable cultural location such as Bilbao is based on his assertion that international transportation is so advanced and contemporary society so amenable to travel that people will gladly make the journey if the art is significant (van Bruggen 1998, 19). GMB’s siting in Bilbao, therefore, relies on the wealth and mobility of a particular echelon of society and thereby, as Jehlen notes, underscores one of the major disjunctions of recent years, “. . . the political opposition between mul- ticulturalism and cultural nationalism, or between the transnationalism of the rich and the localism of the poor” (1999, 29).

An important function of the managerial elites, according to Castells, is “its capacity to disorganize those groups in society that, while constituting a numerical majority, see their interests partially (if ever) represented only within the framework of the fulfillment of the dominant interests” (1996, 415). The GMB has played a surprising role in the advancement of this end. As previously stated, the success of the Bilbao revitalization project depended to a great extent on the ability of Basque officials to refashion the image of the region from one of uncontained terrorism to one of political stability and prosperous vitality. Under the circumstances, Basque identity was at stake on both a local and a global scale. While the majority of the Basque population decried the murders and kidnappings perpetuated by the ETA, there also exist- ed great sympathy for the ETA’S image as freedom fighters and its historic and geographic construction of Basqueness as a thing separate from both Spain and Europe. Ancient Basque identity, therefore, could never be about global connection, but about a spatial logic inextricable from geography, and, much to the chagrin of the Basque business elite, this particular identity was linked to terrorist acts that captured media attention.

Prior to the construction of Gehry’s museum, the Basque government’s efforts to curtail ETA terrorism had been ineffective. If anything, the revitalization strategies for Bilbao had merely provided newer, high-profile targets

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for the ETA. When the media began to divide their attention between the emerging museum and exploding bombs, however, conservative Basque strategists were able to capitalize on the redirected international focus and appropriate the museum as a different kind of Basque symbol-ne that linked the urban, industrial, bourgeois past of Bilbao to a thoroughly modem composition.

The museum also functions as a symbolic rallying point for the conservatives’ vision of Basqueness-and clearly Basqueness appears in need of defi- nition. Bradley notes that ‘I. . . even Basques remain sharply divided as to what constitute[s] the region’s true national boundaries and to what degree the Basque Country should be differentiated from Spain as a nation-state with its own separate language, age-old customs, and political economic systems” (1997,50). The conservatives are providing a unifying concept of Basqueness, one that has no room for the ETA and in fact posits itself as the ETA’S “other” by providing a target for physical attack. Indeed, the museum almost self-consciously invites attack as a form of legitimization. Mark Wigley notes, “In a way, [institutions] construct themselves by constructing the threat. The very sense of space is produced by the sense of what threatens it, of what the space resists or appears to resist” (Wigley 1995, 42). Clearly, the Basque conservatives were aware that the new museum would be struck by the ETA. Yet an attack, or the even just the threat of attack, could be counted on to raise the ire of the vast majority of Basque citizens-particularly citizens who had paid dearly for this museum with their tax dollars. Thus in protesting violence against the museum, Bilbainos would support the conservative vision.

Just as terrorists used the exploding bomb or the bloody victim to keep their cause in the public eye (“It is the particular meaning given to the explo- sion that counts, a meaning produced and negotiated in the mass media. The bomb is only exploded in the building to be seen exploding on the television set” [Wigley 1995, 43]), so did the conservatives pin their political hopes on widespread, international media coverage of their new museum. Their strategy appears to have been successful. In 1998, after the first violence-free elections since the 1970s, the ETA declared an “unconditional cease-fire” with the Basque government and began peace negotiations (Sancton 1998).

On many levels-its inception, its financing, and its construction-the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao represents what Sharon Zukin terms a “cultural strategy.” Zukin explains that culture can be a method of legitimizing or mak- ing visible implicit values by creating images that “. . . suggest new political strategies for managing social diversity” (1995, 273-274). Cultural strategies are ways of claiming power. Through the Bilbao revitalization plan, the conservatives are replacing industry with a network of flows, establishing themselves as the economic leaders by holding out the promise of a new prosperity through an advanced service economy. By embracing the Guggenheim

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museum as representative of the true Basque identity, the Basque managerial classes succeeded in disconnecting Bilbao from its geography and connecting it to their particular globally oriented ideology.

The Fate of Locality

The story of Bilbao raises a number of questions about the fate of locality or localness in a global economy. The urban renewal strategy implemented by the Basques includes, at its very core, a repudiation of geographic localness. The place that is Bilbao is being reconstructed to support connectivity, to be a place apart from geography or geographic identity; to, as Carol Becker notes, “bring [ . . . ] an international audience to Bilbao but stand apart from its cultural locality” (1999,22). The concept of Basqueness, whose spiritual ancestry depends on a disavowal of pre-twentieth-century forms, has been decoupled from the land and re-attached to networks and to buildings, one in particular, that are internationally focused in conception and execution. Castells himself speculates that “the coming of the space of flows is blumng the meaningful relationship between architecture and society” (1996,418). What will it mean for Basque society that, as one critic claims, Gehry has built Los Angeles in Bilbao (Giovannini 1998) and that the dominant sector in Bilbao is more than willing to claim Los Angeles as a symbol of Basque identity?

The Guggenheim museum has been embraced as an emblem of Basque regeneration, and yet in both its material and symbolic existence it appears to have nothing to do with any of the previous constructions of Basque identity that were linked to place or shared historical experience. The building’s architect is from Los Angeles, its forms are modernistic, it is administered from New York, and its art collection is international. Gehry himself has stated that his first concern when approaching the building was for the museum’s heritage (Goldberger 1997), not for Basque or even Spanish heritage and, he claims German expressionist film as major inspiration for the building’s forms. His building shimmers, but, unlike many modernist works, its surfaces do not reflect the city around them; its entrance consciously turns its back on the traditional, gothic core of Bilbao, while addressing the river and refemng visu- ally to other machine-like forms.

International observers of the GMB write admiringly of how keenly Gehry has integrated his design into the city forms of Bilbao, but the art world’s exu- berant embrace of the project too often forces misreadings of the museum’s relationship to its context. Phyllis Lambert, director of Montreal’s Canadian Centre for Architecture, typifies the claims made for the building’s sensitivity to its surroundings: “One of the most extraordinary things about the building . . . is how it remains an essential part of the industrial environment where it is set” (Came 1998a, 64). Yet, looking more closely, the environment in which

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it is set is no longer industrial. The entire waterfront, which before the construction of the museum was referred to as derelict, has been reclaimed for office, retail, and entertainment complexes. The bridge and train station that remain (and have been both physically and symbolically incorporated into the design of the museum) are merely vestiges of a long deceased industrial econ- omy9 In fact, the building functions in a manner exactly opposite from Lambert’s description. It does not remain an essential part of the existing environment; it makes the so-called industrial surroundings part of its presence, part of its new environment. And even then it does so only partially. It appears to anchor itself to the bridge and the railroad tracks to keep itself from float- ing away-it holds onto the bridge and the tracks so that no one can see how it belongs to a space that has no geographic locale.

An article in the Economist observes that the museum is “not merely non- Basque on the outside, but non-Basque on the inside as well.” The Basque word “Museao” is carved into the building’s facade, yet there is nothing uniquely Basque at all about it. Despite promises made by Basque officials to their constituents, it could hardly have failed to have been otherwise. As Kim Bradley (1999) notes, the Guggenheim is a museum for fine contemporary art, but the Basques do not have a long-standing tradition of producing so-called “fine art.” Basque artists were repressed under Franco. The Basque region does have a core group (four in particular) of mid-century artists whose highly political work won them the wrath of the government and subsequent international acclaim, but only one of these artists, Eduardo Chillida, is represented in the GMB.

The New Yorker’s Paul Goldberger, an admirer of Gehry’s design for the GMB, understands the contradictions implicit in a so-called Basque museum designed by an American architect, administered from New York, and almost devoid of Basque art. Yet, like the Basque representatives, he is willing to claim for the Guggenheim Bilbao that it “. . . stands as a metaphor for Basque culture and the relationship it aspires to have with the world; a thing apart, yet entirely willing to make a connection on its own terms” (1997,53). I propose, instead, a rephrasing and reinterpretation of this statement: The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao stands as a metaphor for Basque aspirations, a thing apart that is placed there for the sole purpose of connecting . . . connecting to the space of flows.

NOTES

I . For information on Bilbao in the time of Gehry and Krens, see Bourne, “Europe’s Latest Cultural Capital”; Bradley, “The Deal of the Century”; Came, “Spain’s New Wonder of the World”; Giovannini, “Reshaping Bilbao”; Goldberger, “The Politics of Building”; Gomez, “Reflective Images”; Iglesias, “Bilbao: the Guggenheim Effect”; McGuigan, “Basque-ing in Glory”; Tompkins. “The Maverick; and Zulaika, “The Seduction of Bilbao.”

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2. The struggles of the ETA remain an important force in Basque politics and society even though the international press has shifted its focus to other events in Bilbao.

3. At least one has taken her valuable art collection with her and donated it to the Guggenheim’s midtown rival, the Museum of Modern Art.

4. Once an exhibit has been curated. he argues that the costs of moving it from venue to venue are marginal and notes that larger audiences make it easier to attract corporate sponsorship for the exhibitions.

5. The fascinating building may indeed justify the acclaim. 6. All of these projects depend on information and communication technologies (ICTs), usu-

ally networked ICTs, to operate. 7. Very important to the space of flows are milieux of innovation, a term coined by Castells

and his colleagues Peter Hall and Philippe Aydalot. Milieux of innovation identify regional centers, sometimes but not always attached to leading metropolitan areas, which are characterized by the presence of three basics of production reconfigured for the new international economy: ( I ) raw material in the form of new knowledge, (2) labor in the form of highly skilled workers, and (3) capital in the form of high-risk investment. These three factors are brought together by some sort of “institutional actor” (in the case of Silicon Valley, for instance, Castells identifies Stanford University as the institution). Milieux of innovation compete and cooperate with each other all over the globe and comprise an important set of nodes within the space of flows.

8. See Rotella and Kraul, “In Latin America, a Reconquest”; see also, from the Economist, “Muscling in on Latin America” and “Spanish Banks: First Mover.”

9. To underscore more boldly how fictitious this industrial landscape actually is, Jehlen reports that Gehry had to restrain Bilbao officials from carrying through with their plans to transform this riverfront area into a park.

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reflections on the space of flows: the guggenheim museum bilbao

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