Exhibitions and Education

The Museum’s art programing, educational activities, and public events offer many opportunities to reflect on environmental issues and raise ecological awareness. Workshops, talks, creative sessions, expert panels, and dedicated courses explore different aspects of the climate crisis. Since its opening, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao has hosted numerous exhibitions that directed attention to environmental sustainability, featuring artists such as Allora & Calzadilla, Bill Viola, Diana Thater, Fiona Tan, Olafur Eliasson, Pierre Huyghe, Monira Al Qadiri, The Otolith Group, or Marine Hugonnier.

In addition to the usual exhibition planning and organizing, the Museum’s teams identify collaboration opportunities with the artists featured in the institution’s art program. In the exhibition Arts of the Earth, the collaborative spirit of the project is expressed in the production of numerous works, both historical and contemporary, with local materials and agents. Furthermore, the show’s potential for innovation is fostering synergies with Biscay’s creative fabric and research community.

The Museum’s exhibitions program offers great opportunities to highlight the strong ties between art and the care of the planet. Many of the workshops, creative sessions, talks, and courses organized by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao include elements connected directly to environmental sustainability.

Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Bilbao, for instance, is a participatory work of art that encourages visitors to write down their wishes and tie them to the branches of the tree. This piece from the Museum Collection is activated every year on Earth Day with the aim of raising awareness of the need to take care of the environment around us.