The Fine Arts Museum

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What you are looking at

Doña Casilda Park · left bank

The Fine Arts Museum with the new extension rising above its roof, seen across the squareXabier, Wikimedia Commons, CC0

1
The 1945 buildingA neoclassical front of stone and red brick facing the park, inspired by the great museums of Madrid and Berlin.
2
The 1970 wingA bolder, lighter modern wing added beside the original building, reopened in October 2025.
3
The Foster extensionA steel structure by Norman Foster and Luis María Uriarte hovering over the original buildings.
4
The Arriaga AtriumThe new central hall of the extension, dominated by a sculpture of Euterpe, the muse of music.
5
The old mastersSpanish and European paintings from El Greco and Goya to Van Dyck and Murillo.
6
The Basque paintersA deep collection of Basque art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Reading the place

The sight in full

Why it matters

The Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa in Basque, is the second largest museum in the Basque Country after the Guggenheim, and one of the largest Spanish art museums outside Madrid. Where the Guggenheim shows modern and contemporary art in rotating exhibitions, the Fine Arts Museum keeps a permanent collection that runs from the Middle Ages to the present day.

The glass wing of the Fine Arts Museum under the trees, visitors gathered at its entranceZarateman, Wikimedia Commons, CC0

Its collection is considered one of the most important and varied in Spain: Basque, Spanish and European art, with paintings by El Greco, Cranach, Jan Gossaert, Sofonisba Anguissola, Orazio Gentileschi, Murillo, Goya, Luis Paret, Van Dyck, Ruisdael and Bellotto, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century works by Sorolla, Mary Cassatt, Gauguin, Francis Bacon and Richard Serra, among many others. It stands entirely inside Doña Casilda Park.

Two museums become one

The Museum of Fine Arts was founded in 1908 and opened in 1914, at first in the old civil hospital at Atxuri. The decisive push came from the bequest of a large and valuable art collection by the businessman and philanthropist Laureano de Jado, followed by other gifts from Antonio Plasencia, from the provincial institutions, from the Casa de Juntas and from the old merchants' consulate of Bilbao; the Bilbao painter Manuel Losada was one of its main promoters and its first director.

The glass and metal front of the museum's modern wing beside the shady avenueZarateman, Wikimedia Commons, CC0

Young Basque artists and their association then pressed for a museum of modern art, and on 25 October 1924 a separate Museum of Modern Art opened. An international exhibition held in the city in 1919 had helped bring it about, and the council bought works shown there by Mary Cassatt, Gauguin and others, which entered the collection. The two museums later came together in one building and one institution, and in 2008 the museum marked its centenary under the slogan 100 years of history, 10 centuries of art.

The buildings

The red-brick and stone front of the Fine Arts Museum facing the parkIGOLEA, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The present building, finished in 1945, has neoclassical forms inspired by Madrid's Prado and Berlin's Altes Museum, combining stone and exposed red brick in the sober, historicist style of the period. It was declared a national monument in 1962. In 1970 a new wing by Álvaro Líbano and Ricardo de Beascoa, bolder and lighter, was added beside it, and a reform finished in 2001 linked the two with a connecting gallery and new visitor spaces.

In 2019 the museum chose a much larger extension, called Agravitas, by Norman Foster with Luis María Uriarte. Work started in the following years without closing the museum: the first steel pillar went up in January 2024, and a steel structure now passes over the original buildings. The renovated 1970 building reopened in October 2025, the new Arriaga Atrium opened for a first open day in June 2026, and the official opening of the extended museum was set for October 2026.

What you see

The Fine Arts Museum lit at dusk, a bronze figure reflected in the pool in frontPedro J Pacheco, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 es

From the park, the 1945 front faces the gardens with the word MUSEO over its door. Outside stand several sculptures, among them the monument to the composer Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga by Francisco Durrio and a tall figure by Miquel Navarro. The Foster extension rises over the old roofs, and its new atrium, named after Arriaga, is the heart of the enlarged museum, with a sculpture of Euterpe, the muse of music.

The tree-lined avenue running past the glass wing of the Fine Arts Museum after rainArdfern, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Inside, the permanent collection is shown in 33 galleries, from medieval altarpieces and Flemish panels through the Spanish Golden Age and Goya to Basque painting of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and modern art. Temporary exhibitions take separate rooms. Expect the layout to change as the extension's galleries open, and use the museum's own map on the day.

How the museum grew

The 1945 building opened as the Museum of Fine Arts and Modern Art of Bilbao, directed by Manuel Losada until his death in 1949. Under later directors the institutions that own it decided to add the 1970 wing, and in the decades that followed the museum gained an exhibition hall, an auditorium, a print room and new departments.

The brick and stone building of the Fine Arts Museum above its lawnsCarlos Cunha, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

In 1996, under the director Miguel Zugaza, the museum held a competition for a plan of reform and extension, won by Luis María Uriarte, whose work linked the 1940s building and the 1970s wing and freed space for visitors. Zugaza returned as director in 2017 and led the Foster project. Of the museum's floor area, about 5,000 square meters are given to the permanent collection and more than 1,100 to temporary exhibitions, before the new extension is counted.

How to visit

A bronze dancing figure on a stone pedestal reflected in the museum's poolTereajuria, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Allow two hours for the collection, more for an exhibition. Opening hours, ticket arrangements and any free periods are set by the museum and have changed during the works, so check its official site before going.

The museum is on the edge of Doña Casilda Park in the Ensanche, about ten minutes' walk from the Guggenheim along the park or the river, and a short walk from the Moyúa Metro station. Combine it with the park's duck pond and gardens and with Azkuna Zentroa; the itineraries page puts the two museums in the same day.

Honest notes

The bronze statue of the composer Arriaga by the museum pool, a school group behindJavier Mediavilla Ezquibela, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5

The extension was controversial: a civic group and a report from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando argued in 2021 that it broke heritage law, and building delays pushed the reopening back by more than a year. Whatever you think of it, the museum with its new spaces is larger than ever, and for art before 1950 it is the most important collection in Bilbao.

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