Displaying items by tag: guggenheim museum bilbao

The Guggenheim museum will remain in Bilbao for the foreseeable future. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation announced yesterday that it was renewing the agreement is has with the Basque museum until 2034. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao has welcomed almost 17 million visitors and staged over 140 exhibitions since it opened in 1997; and has had much success over the 17 years that is has engaged with the public. In fact the museum success quickly triggered the redevelopment of the formerly decrepit port area of Bilbao and bolstered tourism in the entire Basque Country.

The regeneration of the area and the economic evolution of the country was coined the “Guggenheim effect" soon after to describe this museum-led process.

On June 27, 2014, the Whitney Museum of American Art will launch the most comprehensive retrospective ever devoted to the work of contemporary artist, Jeff Koons. The exhibition will span over three decades and will include 120 works across a variety of mediums. The exhibition will be the final show held in the Whitney’s uptown location before the museum opens its new, highly-anticipated facility in downtown Manhattan in spring 2015. After it concludes on October 19, 2014 ‘Jeff Koons: A Retrospective’ will travel to the Centre Pompidou in Paris and then to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain.

Koons, one of the most popular living artists, draws inspiration from popular culture and everyday objects, transforming the banal into something monumental, often through dramatic shifts in scale. Koons works with anywhere from 90 to 120 assistants to bring his works to fruition. His work often raises questions about taste, the role of the artist, and the meaning of art in modern culture.

Adam D. Weinberg, the Whitney’s Alice Pratt Brown Director, said, “Jeff Koons is one of the most significant artists of our era, and this retrospective will allow us for the first time to take the full measure of his art. Never before have so many of his works been on view together, nor has the Whitney ever devoted so much space to a single artist. We felt it was a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the closing of our uptown building with an exhibition of great scholarly rigor that also promises to be a major international cultural event.”