ancient cities

Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain
Source: Andreas Praefcke.
which coincidences played an important role, were
not shaped primarily by “cultural” concerns, but,
instead, are better explained by two factors, one
global and one domestic: (1) recognition of the need
for regional image change and urban regeneration
in Bilbao under conditions of contemporary globalization—which
in practice meant participating in
a global venture for spectacular architecture, and
(2) the long historical desire on the part of the
Basque Nationalist Party leaders for political emancipation
from Spain, reflected in this case in the
realm of cultural politics. In this way, the Guggenheim
project was not an isolated case of urban boosterism.
Instead it is the latest and most successful
example of how Basque leaders, in the only subnational
government in Europe with exclusive powers
to levy taxes, have managed to bypass Madrid and
conduct their own independent international affairs.
The project’s political overtones are clear, but its
economic dimension is also important. Although
Bilbao, Spain
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the museum has been hailed by the international
press as the icon that has turned Bilbao’s economy
around, the evidence leads us to question the strategy’s
long-term feasibility and shows that an urban
economy the size of Bilbao’s cannot rely simply on
a museum for economic development. Nonetheless,
as a state project fully funded with public money,
the Bilbao Guggenheim will remain an urban icon
independent of financial pressures. One of the lessons
of Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum is that,
because it has the power of rescaling the significance
of specific buildings and the cities where
they are built, iconic, spectacular architecture—
driven, in this case, by the ambitions of entrepreneurial
politicians and cultural managers rather
than transnational corporations—plays a fundamental
role in the worldwide deployment of contemporary
globalization and the creation of
large-scale social spaces representing capitalism’s
transnational strategies.