Art Changes Everything

Northern Spain offered a rich cultural experience.

Symbol Is Key

When the Guggenheim Museum opened in 1997, Bilbao was
struggling to recover from the collapse of industry.

The same area twenty years later.

Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Basque Country,  recently celebrated it’s 20^th anniversary. In looking over what has happened in Bilbao since its opening in 1997, it is clear that Frank Gehry’s stupendous architectural construction altered the landscape of the city. It both symbolized the ship building and industrial past of Bilbao and launched its future as a cultural center for Europe. 

Bilbao’s depressed shipping port area has been totally transformed as a result of shifting the city’s economic base to include culture and a service sector as well as traditional industry.

A Changing Story of Meaning

This image of Africa as a human skull greeted us at the entrance to the
Altamira Museum. More and more research is showing that Homo Sapiens
came into existence throughout the African continent. 

Entering the replica cave at Altamira in Cantabria is
an awe inspiring experience.  

To get to the Altamira caves, a cave replica, and a state of the art museum, it is helpful to go to the charming Medieval town of Santillana del Mar. It is impossible to overstate the impact made by the paintings discovered in the caves of Altamira, as well as in the caves of Lascaux in France, near the end of the 19^th century. 

While most people had previously assumed that Western culture began in Greece and/or with the spread of Christianity through the Roman Empire, the power and creative techniques discovered at Altamira reveal that Homo Sapiens of the Paleolithic era experienced and represented their encounter with the transcendent. The artists of Altamira and stone artists in every part of the world paved the way for further abstract thinking and the development of written language.

Archeology as Rituals of Discovery

The patient work at Atapuerca by hundreds of archeologists
and students over the last sixty years has resulted in
a new story about our human evolution.

Part of our tour of archeological sites in Atapuerca included
demonstrations of techniques used by our Paleolithic ancestors, such
as their color formulations and airbrushing techniques.

Construction of a railroad for transporting iron ore in the 1960’s uncovered the first discovery of hominid bones in the region of Atapeurca, an area ten miles outside of the city of Burgos in Castile and Leon. Since that time archeologists have been faithfully digging in a number of limestone karst areas. Following precise scientific practices they have uncovered 83% of all hominid bones so far discovered in the world. Their bone and artifact findings have provided evidence of homo evolution right up to Neanderthals. 

The world began to take notice in the 1990’s and the city of Burgos created a Museum of Human Evolution to help people understand human evolution in relation to a changing planet. From the front of the museum one can see the spires of the cathedral of Burgos, a world heritage site, reminding visitors that experiencing the transcendent takes different forms in different epochs.

In the coming weeks I hope to continue sharing more about how Art Changes Everything.