Bilbao's Museo de Bellas Artes opened its most ambitious expansion in decades to the public on October 6, a €45m project by Foster + Partners working with Basque architect Luis Maria Uriarte. The new wing, described as a floating pavilion, doubles the museum's exhibition space to around 6,000 square metres while remodelling a further 8,000 square metres of existing galleries. The extension solves a long-standing problem by reuniting the museum's split campus. Until now, the collection has been divided between two buildings: a Neo-Classical structure from 1945 and a Modernist, Mies van der Rohe-influenced addition from 1970, both remodelled by Uriarte in 2001. The new construction links them with two curved, light-flooded upper storeys that sit above the older fabric, overhanging the front facade on giant V-shaped supports. Visitors enter through a new 1,000-square-metre atrium before reaching the uppermost floor, which holds temporary exhibitions alongside a viewing terrace and restaurant looking over the city and surrounding hills. There is also a dedicated architecture and design space, a new documentation and research centre, and restored offices and visitor facilities. The museum's original entrance in the red-brick 1945 building, with its classical archway and statue-filled alcoves, has been restored and reinstated. The collection that will fill the expanded galleries spans Lucas Cranach the Elder, El Greco, Zurbaran, Goya, Mary Cassatt, Gauguin, Bacon and Richard Serra, alongside oriental art, archaeological treasures and decorative and applied arts. The project also improves links with the museum's famous neighbour, Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao. The expansion matters beyond Bilbao. At a time when many European museums are retrenching, a 45-million-euro commitment to physical growth signals confidence in the civic role of the encyclopaedic collection. Doubling temporary exhibition capacity means the museum can now host the large-scale international loans that previously bypassed the city, giving its historic holdings a contemporary setting and strengthening its position in the Basque Country's cultural life.