ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the global and national dimensions of cultural capitals, and considers the first second order European city to formally adopt this mantle Glasgow. It focuses on Glasgow's marketing image a successful archetype another European industrial city that has this time used an art gallery as the cornerstone of its redevelopment strategy. Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum is an architectural masterpiece, located on the site of a former steel works on the Nervion River in Central Bilbao, North West Spain. A branch of the New York-based Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, it is both a franchised arm of a cultural multinational and a local monument to the arts, urban entrepreneurialism and post-modernity. A photogenic structure, the building along with its architect, has achieved celebrity status around the world. The chapter also considers the timing, form and location of the Bilbao Guggenheim in terms of sustainable cultural capital, and addresses its status as a post-modern archetype.
