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1 2 ADQUISICIONES 3 ANNUAL REPORT 2011 Annual Report 2011 Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Introduction 6 Acquisitions 8 Art Program 14 Loans 18 Education 20 Visitors 30 Individual Members 32 Corporate Members 34 Special Events 36 Press 38 Store/Bookstore 41 Publications 42 Projects 43 Awards and Distinctions 44 Forums 45 VIP Visitors 46 Impact 48 RH and Quality 50 CONTENTS 6 7 Juan Ignacio Vidarte, Director General We were very pleased to see that the museum’s year-end figures for 2011 were quite positive, despite the difficulties that we have naturally faced due to the state of affairs around the world. One of the highlights of the year’s activity was the art program, which offered a thought-provoking exploration of art from the 20th and 21st centuries. We covered the interwar period in Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, Germany, and Spain, 1918–1936; in The Luminous Interval we engaged in a profound examination of the human condition through contemporary works from the Dimitris Daskalopoulos Collection, one of the most important in the world; Painterly Abstraction, 1949–1969: Selections from the Guggenheim Collections took us on a fascinating journey through the affinities between American and European abstract painting; we witnessed an unprecedented dialogue between two great masters of modern and View of the museum’s north facade with Anish Kapoor’s Tall Tree and the Eye and Daniel Buren’s Red Arches in the background contemporary sculpture, Brancusi and Serra; and we ended the year with a new selection of pieces from the Guggenheim Bilbao Collection that illustrate the artistic debate which took place in Europe in the 1970s and 80s. One of the most significant statistical figures of 2011 was the number of visitors received—962,358 in total, representing a slight yet important increase from the previous year—with the proportion of foreign visitors stable at 62%. Meanwhile, our This year was also marked by several important additions to the collection. We acquired the installation Home (1999) by educational activities were a tremendous success in terms of both turnout and participant satisfaction, and our Individual Lebanese-born Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum and Untitled by the Colombian artist Doris Salcedo, two essential figures for and Corporate Members Programs continue to thrive, helping to support the museum’s activities and increase its financial understanding the development of sculptural and installation language since the 1980s. Another welcome newcomer was the autonomy. All of this, combined with initiatives such as the renovation and expansion of our dining services with the re-launch series of feminine portraits entitled Smiles (1994) by renowned American artist Alex Katz. Finally, an additional four works of the Bistró Guggenheim Bilbao and the opening of Nerua (an haute cuisine restaurant that has already earned its first were donated to the museum: British artist Liam Gillick’s How are you going to behave? A kitchen cat speaks (2009) and three Michelin star), has served to reinvent the museum experience, making it more enriching, varied, educational, and unique. photographs by the Madrid-based creator José Manuel Ballester entitled May 3 (3 de mayo, 2008), The Royal Palace (Palacio Real, 2009), and The Raft of the Medusa (La balsa de la Medusa, 2010) from his series Hidden Spaces (Espacios ocultos). The museum has managed to reach the end of a complicated year with very positive results. I trust that our core values of Thanks to its continued efforts to purchase representative examples of the art of our time, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao competitiveness, creativity, innovation, and research will continue to fuel our progress in the months and years to come. collection now boasts a total of 124 works by 70 different artists. INTRODUCTION 8 9 José Manuel Ballester. The Raft of the Medusa (La Balsa de la Medusa), 2010. Photograph on canvas, 491 x 717 cm. Single edition Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa In 2011 the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao collection expanded thanks to the acquisition of Alex Katz’s series of paintings entitled Smiles (1994), the works Home (1999) by Mona Hatoum and Untitled (2008) by Doris Salcedo, as well as the donations of How are you going to behave? A kitchen cat speaks (2009) by Liam Gillick and three photographs by José Manuel Ballester from his series Hidden Spaces (Espacios ocultos). Thus, by the end of the year covered in this report, the Bilbao holdings comprised 124 works by 70 different artists, spanning the period from 1950 to the present. The incorporation of Alex Katz’s pictorial series Smiles marks the artist’s debut in the Guggenheim Collections, where it will Alex Katz. (left to right): Ursula Smiles 2; Ada Smiles; Belinda Smiles; Yvonne Smiles; Katryn Smiles; Karen Smiles; Lauren Smiles; Lysa Smiles; Ahn Smiles; Alba Smiles; Jessica Smiles; from the series Smiles, 1993. Oil on linen, 243.8 x 182.9 cm each. Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa join and reinforce the existing selection of works by American creators who began working in the late 1950s and early 1960s, such as Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, and James Rosenquist. The son of Russian immigrants, Alex Katz (New York, 1927) is one of the leading painters of his generation. With his particular approach to figuration, in a context where Abstract Expressionism still reigned supreme, Katz presaged the advent of a renewed interest in “realism” in the field of representation, even before Pop Art took off. Though he is often associated with this movement due to the fact that his work incorporates ACQUISITIONS 10 ACQUISITIONS 11 details taken from the film industry, advertising, or fashion, Katz refuses to accept this label: “Pop art is about signs, whereas I deal with symbols. Pop Art is cynical and ironic, while my work is not. Those are the differences. Pop art is modern, my work is traditional.” Many of the subjects depicted in Katz’s paintings are women. The series of works, united under the generic title Smiles, consists of eleven portraits of smiling women against a dark neutral background. To create his portraits, Katz often relies on people from his own circle of acquaintances (his wife, female friends, etc.) whom he identifies by including their first names in the titles of the canvases. In his case, the recourse to portraiture should be understood as an exercise that attempts to solve the classic “figure-ground” relationship; consequently, the portrayed subjects serve the purpose of research tools. Mona Hatoum (Beirut, 1952) and Doris Salcedo (Bogotá, 1958) are both essential figures for understanding the development of sculptural and installation language since the 1980s. Their works reflect the adoption of a new strategy in the museum’s acquisitions policy, which aims to expand the geographic scope of the Bilbao collection beyond European and American art. Hatoum’s work Home is a large table strewn with various kitchen utensils that are attached to each other by metal clips and wires plugged into an electrical outlet. A computer program causes the electric current to turn on several small light bulbs hidden beneath some of the objects, which shine with variable intensity and frequency, while speakers amplify the humming noise that this circuit emits. The entire installation is fenced off by a series of horizontal steel cables that separate the audience from these potentially lethal objects. Hatoum created Home in the 1990s, a critical period in her international career when museums around the world dedicated major exhibitions to her work and she was shortlisted for the prestigious Turner Prize (1995). In this piece, as in other pivotal examples from her earlier and later oeuvre, the artist creates an unsettling, threatening scene that contrasts with the habitual ideas comfort and safety that the term “home” usually evokes. Hatoum triggers an emotional response in the spectator by creating environments that are halfway between attraction and repulsion, between the familiar and the bizarre. Doris Salcedo is the first female Latin American artist to have a work included in the collection of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Her piece Untitled belongs to the largest series she has produced to date, begun in 1989 and still in progress, in which she combines groups of old wardrobes and tables to create hybrid forms whose cavities and surfaces are partially covered with concrete. Thanks to their material qualities, the resulting forms operate as vehicles of implicit narratives, both personal and collective, and in many cases represent first-hand evidence of a real victim of the war in Colombia, as the artist has pointed out. In 2007 Salcedo exhibited a work entitled Shibboleth, a huge crack in the floor symbolizing the gap that separates the First and Third Worlds, in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, London. In addition to these acquisitions, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao collection also received four donations: an installation by British artist Liam Gillick and three photographs by José Manuel Ballester. Mona Hatoum. Home, 1999. Wood, galvanized steel, stainless steel, electric wire, crocodile clips, light bulbs, computerized dimmer switch, amplifier, and speakers. 76.2 x 198.1 x 73.7 cm (table). Overall dimensions variable. Edition 1/3 + 1 AP. Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa Doris Salcedo. Untitled, 2008. Wood, metal, and cement, 78 x 247 x 121 cm. Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa 12 ACQUISITIONS 13 José Manuel Ballester May 3 (3 de mayo), 2008 Photograph on canvas, 268 x 347 cm. Edition 1/2 + 1 AP Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa The Royal Palace (Palacio Real), 2009 Photograph on canvas, 276 x 318.4 cm. Edition 1/2 + 1 AP Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa themes and attitudes that the artist addresses in his work. Here Gillick brings to social sculpture the utopian dream of access to upscale design and the modern discourse about the inhabitable space.