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UPCOMING FREE ACTIVITIES
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September 19, 2024

Participate in our courses and visit the Guggenheim Museum with all our Spanish students

As part of Instituto Hemingway’s free, daily excursions we visited the world famous Guggenheim museum located in the centre of Bilbao. Designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry and opened by King Juan Carlos I of Spain in October 1997, the museum is home to various, renowned works of modern and contemporary art. Gehry was asked by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to build something daring and innovative and upon approaching the museum you can certainly see he listened. In fact, the museum is so spectacular that architect Philip Johnson described it as “the greatest building of our time”. Situated right beside the Nervión River, which runs through Bilbao, the 32,500-square-meter building is completely unique and extraordinary in its appearance. Shapes of stone, glass and titanium ingeniously intertwine and appear utterly random. The reflective panels that cover the majority of the building seem reminiscent of fish scales.

Outside the museum we saw various works of art including Louise Bourgeois’ “Mamá”, a 10 metre tall sculpture made out of bronze and stainless steel. It resembles a spider with a sack of 26 marble eggs. The statue is supposed to be an ode to her mother, and while at first I thought this to be a negative tribute, Bourgeois explains: “spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother”. We also saw ‘The Puppy’, a large and beautiful statue designed by Jeff Koons made out of steel and entirely covered in flowers.

Upon entering the museum you get a sense of its immense size. We learnt that it has more exhibition space than the three Guggenheim museums in New York combined. The atrium is extremely spacious and was nicknamed by Gehry as ‘The Flower’ as its walls and ceilings curve like a petal. After entering for free, thanks to Instituto Hemingway, we grabbed our audio guides and went straight to the museum’s biggest gallery, home to Richard Serra’s exhibition ‘ La Materia del Tiempo’. Consisting of 8 enormous, weathering steel sculptures that represent the artist’s impression of the physicality of space and time, the structures seem to stand weightlessly twisting and bending as if made of paper. We walked in and around the sculptures experiencing a dizzying sensation as they twist and turn in such a way that you lose all sense of direction.

Moving onto the next gallery we saw Andy Warhol’sShadows’ exhibition, consisting of 102 canvases all showing nearly identical images made from different colour combinations. Warhol’s methods are described as “machine method”, as all images are so similar they appear to be made by machines. However, each image is hand made using sponges. One of the exhibition’s many purposes is to criticise mass consumerism, and the repetitive nature of our modern day lives.

We spent many worthwhile hours exploring this vast and fascinating museum, seeing various other pieces of work by well renowned artists such as Pablo Picasso and Sam Taylor-Johnson.

If you want to experience similar, free, daily excursions throughout Bilbao, while also improving your Spanish, then do not hesitate to join us at Instituto Hemingway.

Our school offers professional, effective and worthwhile morning Spanish classes and in the afternoon the opportunity to explore this fascinating city and its surrounding areas at no extra cost. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to write to us at info@institutohemingway.com.
We hope to see you soon!

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