The Bilbao Fine Arts Museum Archive was created in response to the need to gather, conserve, classify and divulge the contents of the documents generated by Museum's many different Departments over its hundred-year-old existence.

Thus, it satisfies the requirements of current laws of the Basque Autonomous Community, such as Basque Cultural Heritage Law 7/1990 and Decree 232/2000 by dint of which Archive Services and other regulatory norms concerning Basque Documentary Heritage are approved and regulated. Preliminary studies are currently being carried out prior to implementing an integral documentary handling system.

The Collections mainly comprise minutes of the Boards, annual reports, registries of works of art, annual inventories, general correspondence and a large and varied collection of photographs, the majority of which depict the Fine Arts Museum building. Those Collections related to the activities of the Modern Art Museum are rather more limited. A large percentage of these documents is currently in the process of being digitalised and computerised.

In addition to the documentation generated purely by the Museum itself, the Archive also conserves documents of historical and artistic interest from different private donations or acquired by the Museum itself with particular attention being given to documents concerning Basque artists. In this particular field, the following stand out: the Gutiérrez de Zubiaurre Collection that has gathered correspondence between the brothers Valentín and Ramón and sister Pilar de Zubiaurre and work undertaken by Bilbao art critic, Ricardo Gutiérrez Abascal during his exile as Professor of the National School for Architecture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, but who is perhaps better known under his pseudonym of Juan de la Encina. Another outstanding donation of documents is that related to the painter, Balerdi that includes correspondence, photographs, slides, etc., the majority of which deal with exhibitions of the artist's work. In the field of acquisitions, the Uranga Collection includes some quite extraordinary collected letters covering correspondence with artists such as Ignacio Zuloaga, Francisco Durrio, Darío de Regoyos and Manuel Losada, amongst others.

Collections are at the complete disposal of researchers who previously confirm the reasons for their consultations by calling telephone number (+34) 94 439 60 60.

Here is a selection of the exceptional documents we custody in our Archives: