AVILES, Spain: The heads of seven leading cultural institutions, including the Sydney Opera House and London s Barbican Centre, gathered Friday in Spain to look for new ways to work together. The two-day meeting is in the northwestern city of Aviles, which will be home to a space-age cultural centre designed by award-winning Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer that will be shared by the seven institutions. Work on the Niemeyer Cultural Centre, featuring a 1,000-seat auditorium, a 4,000 square meter gallery and a multiplex cinema, is set to begin in March and is expected to last two years. The five other institutions that will share the space are the Alexandria Library, the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, the Paris Pompidou Centre, New York s Lincoln Centre and the Tokyo International Forum. Linus Fung, chief of cultural services at the Hong Kong Cultural Center, said he hoped a Chinese opera would be held during the opening season of the 30.5-million-euro ($45 million) Niemeyer Cultural Centre. This is a way to foster cultural exchange, he said at the meeting, dubbed the G8 of culture in a reference to the annual gathering of leaders of the Group of Eight leading nations. The director of the Alexandria Library s cultural centre, Sherif Mohie El Din, said he hoped the new institution would hold an event that explores Spain and Egypt s shared Islamic and Mediterranean influences. We have a real chance to work about the Mediterranean side and the Arab culture, he said. Several other cultural centers took part in the meeting and made suggestions for possible events. The director of South Africa s Apartheid Museum, Christopher Till, said that an exhibit it is planning to hold next year to mark former South African president Nelson Mandela s 90th birthday could be shown at the centre in Aviles. People would want to see it everywhere. Maybe this is a possibility, he said. The building will be built on what was the centre of the city s steel industry in the 1950s and which has since fallen into decline. It will feature the curves that Niemeyer, who turns 100 on Saturday, used in Brasilia and his flying saucer-shaped museum in Niteroi, near Rio de Janeiro. Local officials hope it will revive Aviles the way the opening of the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim museum 10 years ago in Bilbao helped transform the Basque city from an industrial backwater into a cultural centre. We are recuperating the city, its historic center, the river and we want to make culture a key part of the transformation of Aviles. The cultural center will fuel development, said Aviles Mayor Pilar Valero.
