Music in Museums: The of Guggenheim Bilbao Case

Abstract

This paper reconstructs the musical programming of the Guggenheim Bilbao since its beginnings. Three perspectives are displayed: on the one hand, the organisation of concerts in relation to the exhibitions (and their justification) as opposed to the use of the museum’s spaces for events that are apparently not directly related to the exhibitions . On the other hand, we briefly examine proposals that, due to their audiovisual or choreographic nature, involve attention to sound in the museum. Finally, the two major commissions are analysed on the occasion of the museum’s tenth and twentieth anniversaries respectively, in terms of the constitution of events that propose to sound the entire building. For these three lines, numerous examples are presented to illustrate what has been proposed, also in relationship to other Spanish institutions. In this way, an attempt is made to trace the underlying discourse of the Guggenheim with respect to music, which oscillates between a initial commitment to contemporary creation and the attraction of audiences.