Family Tour

Plaza, terrace

Some of the works in the Collection are permanently on display either inside or outside Frank Gehry’s building. They include a few site-specific installations designed by contemporary artists especially for the places where they stand.

1st and 3rd floors

The Museum’s exhibitions give you a lot of opportunities to learn about the new forms of creation and understand works of art. Walk around The Matter of Time, Richard Serra’s installation, exploring the sculptures and looking at their morphing shapes. After your exploration, climb up to the balcony overlooking the installation for a broader view. You will be astonished!

1st floor, basement

You will find restrooms on every level in the Museum and baby changing facilities on the 1st floor and the basement.

1st floor, Coatroom

At the Museum cloakroom you will find strollers and baby backpacks to carry your kids around more comfortably.

Bar and Restaurants

The Bar Guggenheim Bilbao serves snacks, pintxos, pastries, and beverages, plus a menu of the day. In addition, the Museum affords two world-class culinary experiences, at the Nerua Guggenheim Bilbao, an haute cuisine restaurant, and the Bistro Guggenheim Bilbao, a restaurant wrapped in a more informal atmosphere. The availability of this service depends on the specifics of the health situation related to COVID-19.

In the exhibition dedicated to Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara (b. 1959), you can see paintings, drawings, sculptures, and ceramics, as well as an installation: My Drawing Room 2008, Bedroom Included, a small-size architectural structure made with recycled materials, recreating the artist’s studio. Look through the window to see what is inside: drawings, colored pencils, paintings, sculptures, and figurines collected by the artist. You will also hear music – tunes from the 1960s and 1970s, the songs Nara usually listens during his creative process.

In the 1980s, Yoshitomo moved to Germany to study Art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. He did not speak German, but soon he realized he could use art to communicate with people, to tell them about his ideas and feelings. That is when he started painting his naughty-looking children. Take a look at Missing in Action, for instance, which he painted in 1999. What is this girl up to? What do you think she is hiding?

On the Museum’s second floor you will find and exhibition of some of the most relevant works by Swedish artist and pioneer of abstraction Hilma af Klint (b. 1862; d. 1944).

Hilma af Klint’s works were visual representations of complex spiritual ideas, predating the first purely abstract compositions by artists such as Piet Mondrian, Vasily Kandinsky, and other creators. Inspired by Theosophy, Anthroposophy, and other spiritual and religious movements, af Klint deals with subjects that include the different stages of life, the evolution, and others. She also drew inspiration from science, as attested by the series shown in gallery 202, dedicated to subatomic particles, and the numerous entries on the subject in her notebooks.

Having filled over 20,000 pages with her notes, af Klint expressed her wish for her work to remain unseen for twenty years after her death. Accordingly, she left a treasure of abstract work for future generations to find.