The imposing building of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao has stood on the banks of the Nerviòn since 1997. Its spectacular architecture, and the modern and contemporary artworks it holds, have transformed the city in Spain’s Basque region into an art lover’s paradise. To keep the priceless  artworks from the museum collection , including artists like  Mark Rothko, Yves Klein, Cy Twombly, Anselm Kiefer, Robert Rauschenberg and Eduardo Chillida, as well as the 2020 temporary exposition of Olafur Eliasson, El Anatsui, and Wassily Kandinsky, in their original condition and to display them appropriately, the lighting system has now been refurbished. Zumtobel has developed a special luminaire that meets all the museum’s requirements.

There are no less than three Guggenheim museums around the world, placed in in New York, Venice and Bilbao. The museum was designed by architect Frank O. Gehry in the deconstructivist style, a modern, avant-garde style of architecture characterised by slanting walls, intersecting building elements and sloping or rising ceilings. The impressive 9000 m² exhibition space holds works of art in the form of paintings, sculptures, installations and video art – predominantly masterpieces of the 20th century.

Following the refurbishment of the lighting system, the exhibition spaces have been given a new lease of life, thanks to an LED lighting solution from Zumtobel, who replaced the previous lighting system and achieved new levels of efficiency and light quality. To meet the museum’s technical and financial requirements, Zumtobel developed a custom-made product that can be used as a wallwasher, spotlight, very narrow spotlight and projector.

The most important lighting task in the museum is the perfect highlighting of the essence or shape of an exhibit. The excellent performance of Zumtobel’s wallwasher spotlight in particular impressed the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao: in the exhibition areas, with ceilings up to 12 metres high, the luminaire offers the perfect mix of finely accented and large-scale lighting, together with uniform light distribution throughout combined with outstanding colour rendering (Ra > 96). Additional spotlights illuminate the artworks sensitively and precisely. UV- and IR-free light protects the exhibits, three colour temperatures, 3000 K, 3500 K and 4000 K, showcase the artworks perfectly. In addition, a special filter can be used to create diffuse light and oval light distribution.

With the help of rotationally symmetrical Fresnel lens optics available as 6° and 8° versions, the VERY NARROW SPOT spotlight offers particularly precise, sharply contoured lighting. The PROJECTOR spotlight also comes with a special zoom for focussing the light, with four different lenses (14º, 25º, 35º and 50º) to help achieve this. Zumtobel’s custom-made lighting solution helps to bring the exhibits to the fore – enhanced by perfect lighting and the museum architecture.

Thanks to innovative LED technology, the special lighting solution also enables a significant reduction in energy consumption compared with the previous museum lighting, which was a requirement by the museum. Bluetooth makes maintaining the lighting solution particularly easy. Zumtobel has installed more than 1000 special luminaires at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.