Past

Exhibitions

Consult everything you need to know about current and upcoming exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

Exhibitions | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Past | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Barbara Kruger

Opening Talk

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Occident

Gallery 205

Gallery 206

Gallery 207

Gallery 209

Gallery 203

Gallery 202

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents the first comprehensive survey in Spain of American artist Barbara Kruger, whose bold, thought-provoking work has captivated audiences for over five decades. This expansive exhibition explores how Kruger harnesses the power of words and images to question the structures that shape our daily lives—identity, desire, truth, and control.
From the very beginning of her career, Kruger has challenged how language functions in the media, in politics, and in our own inner dialogues. Using concise, declarative phrases set in stark black and white text punctuated by either red or green, she draws from the visual language of advertising—but instead of selling products, her works demand critical thinking. Phrases like “Your body is a battleground” or “I shop therefore I am” have become cultural touchstones, raising urgent questions about gender, consumption, and power.
This exhibition brings together works from across her career—early paste-ups, large-scale vinyl texts, video installations, audio interventions, and site-specific pieces created especially for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. As one moves through the galleries, Kruger’s art unfolds across floors, walls, and screens, immersing visitors in a charged visual and sonic environment. Her work is not just something to look at—it is something to experience, to question, and to confront.
In dialogue with Bilbao’s own linguistic and cultural histories, Kruger has created work in Spanish and Basque that explores how language defines who we are and how we live together. As she puts it, “Language is a powerful force—and it defines us.”
At a time when information is constant and truth feels increasingly unstable, Kruger’s work encourages us to slow down, read closely, and think deeply. With wit, urgency, and visual precision, she reminds us that images speak—and so must we.
Galleries: 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207, 209 
Curator: Lekha Hileman Waitoller
 
Barbara Kruger 
Untitled (Forever), 2017/2025. Digital print on vinyl wallpaper and floor covering. Installation view, Barbara Kruger: Another day. Another night. Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, June 24–November 9, 2025. Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers

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Barbara Kruger: Another day. Another night.

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents the first comprehensive survey in Spain of American artist Barbara Kruger, whose bold, thought-provoking work has

Barbara Kruger: Another day. Another night. | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

This year, I would like to focus on the opportunities that can be found in schools in small towns.

The Artists

Ibon Garagarza

This year, we resorted to trial and error, and experimentation in art to understand the impact of habitual human actions on nature.

Zaloa Ipiña

The children in this group were enthusiastic and willing to participate. We could see how art can be a tool for social activism.

Nerea Lekuona

By keeping an observant attitude, we kept track of changes in the weather. When it was windy, we opened the windows and listened to the howling wind, trying to mimic it.

Maider López

The program allowed me to work with a group of schoolchildren who showed me they were able to do a lot of work. It has been such a rewarding experience, highlighting the importance of identity and belonging.

Manu Muniategiandikoetxea

This project centered on the animal world and the relationship between humans and nature. The art project brought together creativity, imagination, and environmental awareness

Ibon Sáenz de Olazagoitia

Learning Through Art 

C.P. Juan Ramón Jiménez LHI, Cruces (Barakaldo)

Maps for a Better World

C.P. Zeberio LHI, Zeberio 

Where do we come from? Where are we going?

C.P. Arrateko Andra Mari LHI, Eibar

Art and Identity

CPI Juan Zaragueta IPI, Orio

As Many Skies as There Are Days

C.P. Lamuza LHI, Laudio/Llodio

Camouflage and Mimicry in Nature

C.P. Alonsotegi LHI, Alonsotegi

Embracing Nature

This exhibition presents the work done by more than one hundred children, aged 6 to 12, during the 2024/2025 school year in the context of Learning through Art, an educational program of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. This initiative brings artists to the classroom, where they work with teachers in projects designed to incorporate art into the school curriculum.
Through artistic exploration and discussion, the schoolchildren deal with the contents of the elementary school subjects in creative and personal ways. The activities are designed to connect art to a variety of school areas—Natural and Social Science, Spanish/Basque, Math, and so on—as a way to explore and understand the world around the students.
This year, the projects focused on the seasons and their influence on nature; the effects of human action on the environment; how to camouflage into the natural world around us. They also learned about creation and activism and their possible impact on society, and the work of local artists. Through art and self-knowledge activities they also reflected on identity, at both the personal and the collective levels.
In their processes, the students resorted to a wide variety of disciplines and mediums—painting, sculpture, photography, and performance, among others. All the projects encouraged freedom of expression and emphasized the importance of creativity in education.

The School Exchange

Learning through art 2025

This exhibition presents the work done by more than one hundred children, aged 6 to 12, during the 2024/2025 school year in the context of Learning

Learning through art 2025 | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Helen Frankenthaler: Painting Without Rules

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Fundación BBVA

Making Her Mark: 1950s

Riding the Tide: 1960s

Newfound Freedom: 1970s

Thresholds: 1980s

In Pursuit of Beauty: 1990s

Painting to Finish: 2000s

Among Friends

Invited to Make Sculpture

Helen Frankenthaler (b. 1928; d. 2011), best known for her invention of the soak-stain technique, played a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting. A tireless experimenter over the course of six decades, the artist produced a prolific stream of paintings on canvas and paper, in addition to sculptures, ceramics, tapestries, and print editions. Her innovative work, represented in the collections of major museums worldwide, continues to inspire contemporary artists.
Born in New York City, Frankenthaler studied studio art with Paul Feeley at Bennington College, in Vermont, before returning to Manhattan, where she gravitated to abstract art. By the early 1950s she had gained direct access to key figures in the New York School—icons of postwar American art—all of whom shared her unwavering commitment to experimentation, some of whom became part of her inner social circle.
Helen Frankenthaler: Painting Without Rules contextualizes the painter’s creative output through the lens of her artistic affinities, influences, and friendships. Comprising thirty of Frankenthaler’s poetic abstractions created between 1953 and 2002, the exhibition also features select paintings and sculptures by some of her contemporaries—Anthony Caro, Morris Louis, Robert Motherwell, Kenneth Noland, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and David Smith—highlighting the synergies between these artists.
Painting Without Rules is designed chronologically, decade to decade, beginning with the 1950s and ending in the 2000s. Each section, paced by a curatorial text, represents another chapter of Frankenthaler’s prolific career. The exhibition celebrates the legacy of a pioneering artist who never stopped exploring new ways to make abstract art.
The exhibition is organized by the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, and the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York, in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; and it is curated by Douglas Dreishpoon, Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Catalogue Raisonné.
Gallery: 105
 
Helen Frankenthaler 
Moveable Blue, 1973 
Acrylic on canvas 
177.8 x 617.8 cm 
ASOM Collection 
© 2025 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VEGAP 
Photo: © ASOM Collection

IN FOCUS Helen Frankenthaler

Chronology

We’d like to invite you to enjoy a virtual tour of the exhibition Helen Frankenthaler. This tour includes all the works and didactic texts in the show.

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VIRTUAL TOUR

Helen Frankenthaler (b. 1928; d. 2011), best known for her invention of the soak-stain technique, played a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract

Helen Frankenthaler: Painting Without Rules | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Vito Acconci / Sergio Prego: YOU

The Film &amp; Video exhibitions program at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is permanently committed to contemporary artistic practices associated with the moving image.
The point of departure for this exhibition is the collaboration and friendship that united Vito Acconci (b. 1940, New York; d. 2017) with Basque artist Sergio Prego (b. 1969, Donostia/ San Sebastián), whose artistic paths mingled in a key period of activities of the speculative design and architecture firm Acconci Studio. This exhibition proposes a subjective journey through Acconciʼs practice in video and performance using a display system designed by Prego, whose distinctive approach to sculpture deeply resonates with Acconci’s understanding of constructed spaces and the forces driving bodies in them. Their work share a specific attention to aesthetic phenomena emerging from the interplay of the senses with media and architecture, as though corporeality constantly tried to cope with shapes and norms before the lens. For both artists, artworks can operate as distinct manifestations of such tensions and paradoxes, whose impact directly affects the visitor’s physical self-awareness.
In the first part of the show, several videos by Prego play simultaneously while Acconci’s sound work Running Tape (1969) resonates in a corner of the gallery. The latter’s exercise —repeatedly counting while he ran until losing his breath, over and over—affects time, while Prego uses simple image editing hacks to present impossible positions and movements in space. Acconci’s voice can also be heard on the other side of the room, this time as the narrator of a documentary reflecting on his radical design practice. In the main space, visitors discover two large inflatable structures by Prego that operate as projection screens for select historical videos by Acconci. In his recorded performances, Acconci used the camera less as a means for self-portraiture than as a vehicle for provocation. We witness him directly pointing his finger or intimately whispering in Centers (1971) and Turn On (1974); and aggressively testing his body in Three Adaptation Studies (1970). In these works, Acconci desperately calls for attention as though he had presciently anticipated future uses of the camera in social media. More than five decades after their making, we cannot help feeling pointed at, often uncomfortably, by Acconci’s video works.
Gallery: 103 
Curator: Manuel Cirauqui
 
Vito Acconci 
Three Adaptation Studies, 1970 
Film Super 8mm transferido a video (fotograma) 
Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix, New York

The Film &amp; Video exhibitions program at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is permanently committed to contemporary artistic practices associated with the

Vito Acconci / Sergio Prego: YOU | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

in situ: Refik Anadol

Exhibition Partner:

1of1

Technology Partner:

Euskaltel (Anadol)

This exhibition marks the launch of in situ, a new series dedicated to site-specific installations that push the boundaries of contemporary practices. Bringing together artists whose work spans visual art, technology, music, and performance, in situ explores new ways of perceiving and inhabiting space.
in situ: Refik Anadol presents Living Architecture: Gehry, a groundbreaking audiovisual installation that reimagines Frank Gehry’s architectural legacy through artificial intelligence (AI) and generative art. Developed by Refik Anadol Studio, the custom-built AI model Large Architecture Model (LAM) is based on advanced technology and has been trained for months on a vast archive of open-access imagery, sketches, and blueprints to transform Gehry’s architectural language into ever-changing landscapes of dynamic form, color, and movement. Augmenting this visual spectacle is an immersive soundscape composed by Kerim Karaoglu, blending AI-generated audio with material recordings captured within the Museum itself.
Living Architecture: Gehry unfolds across six interconnected chapters, each representing a distinct stage in the evolution of data into architectural imagination:
<ul>
<li>Chapter I — Data Universe: A vast constellation of materials and data—archival photographs, plans, and structural documents—are compiled into a memory space.</li>
<li>Chapter II — Data Plotting: As the data is processed, complex patterns emerge through the arrangement of form, texture, and spatial composition.</li>
<li>Chapter III — Data Tunnel: The data transitions into immersive visual environments in the latent space, inviting viewers to engage with the evolving process of human-machine collaboration.</li>
<li>Chapter IV — Large Architecture Model: By transforming Gehry’s forms, the AI generates new architectural possibilities that push the boundaries of imagination and design.</li>
<li>Chapter V — Machine Hallucination: A moment of abstraction, where AI-generated structures break free from conventional spatial constraints, offering hallucinatory, dreamlike visions.</li>
<li>Chapter VI — Dreams: A return to the world of architecture, now envisioned through the limitless imagination of AI—where architecture transforms in real time, continuously generating new forms that emerge and evolve in the moment.</li>
</ul>
As the inaugural exhibition of in situ series, Living Architecture: Gehry exemplifies the way Anadol explores the future of site-specific, AI-driven art, where data becomes material and space becomes an evolving canvas of memory, form, and imagination.
Built upon ethically sourced data and powered by sustainable computing practices, the installation reflects a conscientious approach to digital creation, where innovation and responsibility go hand in hand.
Galleries: 204, 208 
Curator: Lekha Hileman Waitoller
 
Refik Anadol Studio 
Installation view of Living Architecture: Gehry at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao 
© Refik Anadol, Bilbao 2025

The Process Behind Living Architecture: Gehry

This exhibition marks the launch of in situ, a new series dedicated to site-specific installations that push the boundaries of contemporary practices.

in situ: Refik Anadol | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Masterpieces on Paper from Budapest

Masterpieces on paper from Budapest 

Studies of Heads, ca. 1504–05

View of Sarmingstein on the Danube, 1511

Venus Disarming Cupid, ca. 1527–30

Dutch Farmhouse in Light and Shadow, 1635–36

Study Sheet, Two Female Models and Drapery, ca. 1717

View of Budapest, 1881

The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Winter, 1884

Two Women Embracing, 1915

Composition, 1922

13 traces, 2016

This exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and The Museum of Fine Arts – Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest, an esteemed institution that showcases treasures of international art spanning from Antiquity to the 21st century, and Hungarian art from the Middle Ages until today. Among the various collections that comprise its holdings, the Collection of Prints and Drawings stands out in both time range and quantity, gathering approximately 9,000 drawings and 100,000 prints by European artists.
An extensive and varied array of works, the show provides a comprehensive overview of art on paper from the 1400s to the present day, including such great artists as Albrecht Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Rembrandt, Francisco de Goya, Miklós Barabás, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, Egon Schiele, Victor Vasarely, Vera Molnar, Judit Reigl, Dóra Maurer, and even Georg Baselitz, Katharina Grosse, and Gerhard Richter. The nigh on 150 masterpieces shed light on the centuries-old traditions of the genres; on how they are always open to renewal; on their various formal solutions; on their essential features and their characteristic aesthetic effects.
The presentation is structured around twelve thematic sections that feature the distinctive characteristics of each era, while also highlighting connections and relevant issues in the realm of drawing and printmaking. At the first level, it sets before the viewer the technical diversity of drawings and prints, while on a deeper level, it shows their various functions. All this allows visitors to eventually understand the significance of drawing and printmaking within the history of art and see how, in the midst of changes in styles and trends over the centuries, it is drawings and prints that remained truest to themselves.
The exhibition also gives an insight into the rich, eventful history of the Museum of Fine Art’s Collection of Prints and Drawings, the most valuable collection of works on paper in Hungary. A number of archival elements has been gathered to narrate its origins within the art collection of a highly important Hungarian noble family, the Esterházys, and the achievements reached thanks to the indefatigable work of many dedicated museum directors, keepers, and curators.
Galleries: 205, 206, 207, 209 
Curators: Kinga Bódi and Marta Blàvia
 
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) 
Profile Portrait of the Artist’s Son, Albert Rubens, ca. 1618–19 
Black and red chalk, pen, brown ink, brown wash on paper, 246 × 202 mm 
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest; inv. no. 1745 
Purchased from the Esterházy Collection, 1871 
© 2025 Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Spreading images and ideas

Engraving and etching

Lithography

Woodcut

We’d like to invite you to enjoy a virtual tour of the exhibition Masterpieces on paper from Budapest. This tour includes all the works and didactic texts in the show.

This exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and The Museum of Fine Arts – Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest,

Masterpieces on Paper from Budapest | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Tarsila do Amaral

Paris/São Paulo: Passports for Modernism

A “Young Caipira Dressed by Poiret”

The Invention of the Brazilian Landscape

Primitivism and Identity(ies)

Cannibal Brazil

Working Men and Women

New Landscapes

A central figure of Brazilian modernism, Tarsila do Amaral (also known as Tarsila) created an original, evocative body of work, drawing on indigenous and popular imagery and on modernizing forces of a rapidly-transforming country.
In the 1920s, moving between São Paulo and Paris, Tarsila ferried between the avant-gardes of these two cultural capitals. Having constructed a “Brazilian” iconographic world, put to the test by the Cubism and Primitivism so in vogue in the French capital at the time, her painting was the root of the Pau-Brasil and Anthropophagic movements, whose search for an “authentic,” multicultural, and multiracial Brazil aimed to refound the country’s relationship with the European “centers” of colonization.
The activist dimension of Tarsila’s paintings from the 1930s and their ability to accompany the profound transformations of her social and urban environment until the 1960s confirm the strength of an oeuvre attuned to her time, always willing to reinvent itself, despite the unstable conditions of the different times and contexts that an emancipated, independent woman artist had to face.
With her invitation to delve into a Brazilian modernity that she contributed to forging even more than she painted it, Tarsila reveals in her production all the complexity of this concept always subject to debate, which raises identity and societal questions of great importance even today, both in Brazil and Europe.
This exhibition is organized by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and le GrandPalaisRmn
Galleries: 201, 202, 203 
Curators: Cecilia Braschi and Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães 
Venues: Musée du Luxembourg, Paris; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
 
Tarsila do Amaral 
Postcard (Cartão postal), 1929 
Oil on canvas, 127.5 x 142.5 cm 
Private collection, Rio de Janeiro 
© Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A. 
Photo: Jaime Acioli

We’d like to invite you to enjoy a virtual tour of the exhibition Tarsila do Amaral: Painting Modern Brazil. This tour includes all the works and didactic texts in the show.

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Tarsila do Amaral: Painting Modern Brazil

A central figure of Brazilian modernism, Tarsila do Amaral (also known as Tarsila) created an original, evocative body of work, drawing on indigenous and

Tarsila do Amaral: Painting Modern Brazil | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Paul Pfeiffer

The Pure Products Go Crazy

The Long Count (Rumble in the Jungle)

Live Evil (Kuala Lumpur)

Morning After the Deluge

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

The Saints

Justin Bieber Torso

Paul Pfeiffer's artistic practice is distinguished by a profound inquiry into the nature of spectacle, identity, and the intricate mechanisms of image-making within contemporary culture. His oeuvre encompasses a diverse array of mediums, including video, photography, sculpture, and installation, which enables him to delve into the complexities of how images shape our perceptions and experiences.
At the core of Pfeiffer's work lies the manipulation of footage from sporting events, music concerts, and films, which he skillfully edits using early digital software. His creations often reflect on the dualities of veneration and objectification, particularly concerning global icons such as athletes and pop stars. This emphasis highlights the multifaceted roles these figures play within mass culture, drawing attention to the artificiality of media representations and prompting audiences to critically examine their own positions as consumers of such imagery.
Pfeiffer's installations frequently incorporate elements of scale, juxtaposing miniature and larger-than-life formats to disrupt the viewer's relationship with the artwork. This approach heightens awareness of their physical presence in relation to the spectacle. Additionally, his exploration of the architectural forms of stadiums and arenas serves as a critical lens through which he scrutinizes the collective experience of spectatorship. He reveals that these spaces transcend mere venues for entertainment; they are also arenas where societal and political identities are both defined and contested.
The exhibition Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom represents the artist's most extensive presentation in Europe, featuring approximately thirty works that span his prominent career and affirm his status as one of today's most influential artists. This exhibition, which starts in this gallery and continues in gallery 103 also located on this floor, highlights his evolution by presenting iconic pieces that draw upon the dramatic narratives of sports and religion, alongside recent works that address colonial legacies and the complexities of identity. Ultimately, this show not only celebrates Pfeiffer's era-defining contributions to contemporary art but also provides a critical framework for examining the intricate themes of identity, belonging, and the pervasive influence of celebrity culture, underscoring the relevance of his work in our media-saturated society.
Exhibition organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Galleries: 105 and 103
Paul Pfeiffer 
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (07), 2000/24 
Matte C-print 
146.3 x 182.9 cm 
Courtesy of the artist and carlier | gebauer 
© Paul Pfeiffer. Courtesy the artist; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid; Perrotin; and Thomas Dane Gallery, London

Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom

Architecture of the Masses

About Pfeiffer’s Practice

We’d like to invite you to enjoy a virtual tour of the exhibition Paul Pfeiffer. This tour includes all the works and didactic texts in the show.

Paul Pfeiffer's artistic practice is distinguished by a profound inquiry into the nature of spectacle, identity, and the intricate mechanisms of

Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

15€ Adults - 7.5€ Senior - 7.5€ Students

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As part of this initiative, the Museum hosts activities from a variety of fields, including architecture, film, dance, design, gastronomy, music, performance art, and theater.

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