How we went for Guggenheim Museum

Pedro Ruiz Aldasoro

My name is Pedro Ruiz Aldasoro. I am president of Creativity Zentrum and I am also a member of Spanish Chapter of Club of Rome. I am here to explain you something about a Guggenheim Museum and a Bilbao Effect. The truth is that it did not come here. Actually we went and looked for it. Guggenheim Foundation had a try to put a temporary museum in a Massachusetts. It would be called MASS MoCA Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art. But then the former governor Michael Dukakis run for a president and he lost. Anyway the Guggenheim Museum still had plenty of works of art in their deposits but they had not a lot of money. They were looking for another place in Europe. They were looking for Venice to grow little Museum of Peggy Guggenheim and they were looking for another place in Salzburg. In Salzburg they were trying to make a museum inside a mountain.

Well in that time I was a tv producer and we made a programme called Economic Window. And some people who were in contact with Guggenheim Foundation came to Bilbao. There was also Ernest Lluch a person who was then killed by ETA terrorists. He was former Spanish minister. At the end of the programme we talked about how the Guggenheim Foundation was trying to sell that collection. And the last try was with the BB Bilbao Bank. And then suddenly the president of that bank died. So the Guggenheim could not come to Spain.

There was another opportunity and we run for it. We called three main institutions of the Basque country: Basque Government, Basque Regional Council and Townhall of Bilbao. We put all together and called Thomas Krens to came to Bilbao. He was at that time a director of the Guggenheim Foundation. I remember when he came because that was a birthday of my wife. It was the 8th of April 1990. That was a very hard day. Bilbao was in very high a strike. We needed to solve this problem because when the first impression is that people run in streets and the police doing their work you could understand... So we decided to take Krens 140 kilometers from the Bilbao Airport to the Basque capital Vitoria by a helicopter. Then he did not see anything. He just thought that there lived people with money and cars and friendly people were talking to him. So it was the first day. That night we signed a contract that we were interested in work in that project. And we began a feasibility study which took us nine months.

We won because of two main things. First was that Salzburg decided not to build a Guggenheim Museum because it is a very beautiful baroque city and they do not need any museum in there. And second reason was that the mayor of Venice decided that they will not let Mr. Krens to put a Guggenheim Museum at the beginning of the Canal Grande. So we were alone and we won. 

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Pedro Ruiz Aldasoro

Director of Creativity Zentrum in Bilbao, Spain

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