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UPCOMING FREE ACTIVITIES
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April 27, 2024

FREE visit to the Guggenheim Museum 24th May 2017

As part of Insitituto Hemingway’s free, daily excursions we will be visiting the world famous Guggenheim Museum on 24th May 2017. Make sure not to miss out on this great opportunity for all students of our Spanish courses.

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 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 there are 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 his mother, and while at first it appears to be a negative tribute, Bourgeois explains: “spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother”. There is also ‘The Puppy’, a large, beautiful statue designed by Jeff Koons made out of steel and entirely covered in flowers.

The museum 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.

We will have the chance to see Richard Serra’s exhibition ‘The Matter of Time’. 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. You can walk 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.

There is also the current temporary exhibition by Pierre Huyghe titled ‘Human Mask’. A film exhibition, in this the boundary between fiction and reality is blurred as the artist constructs an experience of the world. In masterfully, painstakingly staged settings, people and puppets behave as equals while animals and plants appear to amble leisurely on both sides of the border of the imaginary.

There are also 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.

See you soon!

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