The body, which runs the late Frank Gehry’s 1997 masterpiece in the northern Spanish city of Bilbao, had long sought to open further sites in the region and had earmarked a former factory in Guernica and a plot in Murueta shipyards as potential sites for a museum outpost.
No architects were named for the job and, according to reports, the proposal has now been abandoned.
Both these sites are within the Basque Country’s Unesco-recognised Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve and environmentalists had rallied against the proposals, which were reportedly put on ice almost two years ago.
Campaigners Guggenheim Urdaibai Stop gathered more than 1,000 signatures against the Guggenheim Urdaibai project.
Greenpeace Spain spokesperson Lorea Flores said last month: ‘Social mobilisation has managed to paralyse a project that threatened one of the most important natural jewels of the Basque Country.
‘We are pleased that the board of trustees of the Guggenheim Museum Foundation in Bilbao has ruled out the expansion project in the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve.’
The Guardian reported the Foundation as saying it had abandoned the project ‘in light of the territorial, urban planning and environmental constraints and limitations’.
A statement quoted by the UK newspaper added: ‘New alternatives will be explored in order to face the challenge of elaborating a proposal that responds to the museum’s objective of growing in order to remain a leading cultural institution internationally and a driving force in the Basque Country’s cultural, economic and social scene.’
A section of the foundation’s website dedicated to the expansion was taken down last month.
A translated archived version read: ‘As part of its strategic vision in constant evolution, in recent years the Guggenheim Bilbao has conceived an innovative project for the future that expands the museum’s current exhibition, cultural and educational programmes in a new setting where artistic production, ecology, sustainability, research, social connectivity and technology interact.’
In 2016, acclaimed Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa demanded plans for a Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki be abandoned amid calls to re-run its design competition on a different site. The scheme was eventually scrapped.
Five years earlier, a group of more than 130 international artists and writers threatened to boycott the Gehry-designed Abu Dhabi Guggenheim Museum if the rights of building workers on the site were not addressed. Work was later suspended and the museum is still not open, almost 15 years since construction initially began.
Gehry’s titanium-clad 1997 Guggenheim Museum in northern Spain gave birth to the phrase the ‘Bilbao Effect’, a term used around the world to describe how a single landmark scheme could act as a catalyst for successful regeneration.
The pioneering Pritzker Prize-winning Canadian-American architect died last month, aged 96.