Dr. Irene Nero presents her lecture of the Bilbao Guggenheim Musuem to a crowd of almost 40 people at the Contemporary Art Center of campus. She gave a brief history of its designer and the creative process of its design. 
Zachary Billiot/The Lion’s Roar

The Contemporary Art Gallery hosted a lecture about the man behind what is called “the most significant building of the 20th century,” the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

On Wednesday, Apr. 26 at 5 p.m., Associate Professor of Art History Dr. Irene Nero hosted the talk about the architect Frank Owen Gehry, titled “Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao Museum in Spain: 20 Years Later.” 

The talk analyzed the Guggenheim Museum which officially opened in October 1997, its effects on mainstream architecture and how its praises still hold true nearly 20 years later.

Nero explained how and why she chose Frank Gehry and his museum as the topic for the lecture.

“I was writing my dissertation back in 1996, right before it opened,” said Nero. “I was trying to decide what I was gonna write on, and I wanted to write on architecture. I just started examining architecture. I ran across the plan for the building and I thought, ‘This is something very different, I need to pay attention to it.’ It was my dissertation project.” 

Gehry was born on Feb. 28, 1929 in Toronto, Canada, and moved to America in 1964 with his family where he changed his name from Frank Owen Goldberg to Frank Owen Gehry.

Nero explained that she has loved buildings and was interested in architecture from the time she was a child and that many of her professors in college were architectural historians which contributed to her interest in Gehry.

Nero also gave a little insight into how she chose the material to present at the lecture.

“I realized that I was gonna have to rely on a lot that I already just knew off the top of my head, and then just pull out some old research,” said Nero. “I’ve been studying it for 20 years, so I’ve got boxes of research. So, what I did was I pulled out a couple of my old notebooks that I knew were really significant, because I wrote a book on the topic and a chapter in a book on the topic. I said, ‘This is gonna give me those numbers, some of the data that I just don’t keep in my head.’ Then I actually got on the internet and found current images. Because when I first started doing this, there were no images, so I had to take all my own. Some of those were mine, some of those were brand new images.”

Nero went on to explain why she chose the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain.

“When I looked at his body of work, I said, ‘There’s absolutely nothing that’s ever been like this, nothing ever going to be like this,’” said Nero. “It’s an absolutely unique building. I said, ‘I’m going for the gold. I’m gonna talk about the thing that’s gonna win the gold prize.’” 

Gehry is still alive today, living in Los Angeles, and is also the mind behind other buildings such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. In 2010, he was labeled “The Most Important Architect of Our Age” by Vanity Fair.