BBK-Museum collaborative agreement

A major exhibition of hyperrealist sculpture kicks off its European tour in Bilbao thanks to the renewal of the cooperation agreement between BBK and the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum

Under the cooperation agreement, both organizations renew their support for the BBK-Museum programme, the leading initiative sponsored by a private concern at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, which for 2016 has announced, among other exhibitions, 50 Years of Hyperrealist Sculpture.

Bilbao Fine Arts Museum Foundation president, Juan Mari Aburto and BBK president Xabier Sagredo signed the cooperation agreement this morning in Bilbao to guarantee the continuation of the annual BBK/Museum programme, the biggest and oldest initiative sponsored by a private organization at the Museum, with annual funding of €787,500.

BBK has been working with the Museum since the late 1970s (when it was still the Caja de Ahorros Vizcaína savings bank) and the two institutions signed the first agreement of this kind in 2001. After the Museum refit in 1994, one of the exhibition rooms was baptised as the BBK Gallery, the BBK being Honorary Trustee of the Museum Foundation. In the last year BBK has supported a number of high-profile, rigorous and very successful exhibitions, including Hyperrealism 1967-2013 (83,191 visitors) and Equipo Crónica (62,921 visitors).

In the coming year, the Museum's BBK Gallery first presents The Divine Morales, a show devoted to an essential artist of the Spanish Renaissance in the second half of the 16th century. The exhibition has been co-organized with the National Museum of the Prado in Madrid and Barcelona's National Art Museum of Catalonia. The summer months will usher in 50 Years of Hyperrealist Sculpture, which includes 30 or so sculptures by 19 international artists. The exhibition premieres in Bilbao before travelling to other European museums. From the 1960s, a number of sculptors became interested in a realism based on the vivid imitation of the human figure. Using the traditional techniques of modelling and hollowing, they achieved works that astonish the spectator with dazzlingly convincing representations of the reality of the body. Organized by the Institute for Cultural Exchange in Tubinga, Germany, the exhibition is something of a return match after last year's co-organized presentation of a very popular show of Hyperrealist painting.

As usual under the agreement, the BBK/Museum programme will also be promoting and running other activities and events of interest, including workshops and learning itineraries, designed to heighten the enjoyment and understanding of art of all kinds of publics. The 2016/2017 edition of the BBK-Museum programme of research grants was recently advertised to attract potential candidates, and the lecture cycles in cooperation with the Friends of the Prado Museum Foundation is scheduled to begin in January, under the heading The Prado Bible. The lectures will deal with the subject of sacred history in art.