- The Kutxa Foundation will allocate the 6,300 square meters it has at the International Center for Contemporary Culture of San Sebastian to the new space and has a budget of 15 million euros. Atenea is scheduled to open in the autumn of 2026, before the closure of the Museum of Eureka Science in Miramón.
The Kutxa Foundation announced in 2021 that it would make changes in its social action activity and that, among other things, it would involve the closure of the Eureka Zientzia Museoa, located in Miramón in San Sebastián. But he also said that, in collaboration with the educational community, he would promote the use of the rooms he had in Tabakalera. Four years later, it presents the Strategic Plan for 2030, together with Atenea, a new interdisciplinary space.
By 2030 the Foundation will have a budget of EUR 250 million to implement its strategic plan in activities related to education, science, creativity and sustainability
The strategic plan has been presented at Tabakalera on Tuesday by the Director General of the Kutxa Foundation, Ander Aizpurua, and the Director of Innovation, Miren Karmele Gómez. By 2030, the Foundation will have a budget of EUR 250 million to implement its strategic plan in activities related to education, science, creativity and sustainability.
The most significant change will be the birth of Athena, “open to creativity, curiosity and artistic, scientific and humanistic knowledge”, they explain. In order to take advantage of the “potential” of the Foundation’s space in Tabakalera, distributed on the ground floor, first and fourth, it will have an area of 6,300 square meters. The project has a budget of EUR 15 million and aims to open it by the autumn of 2026.
On the ground floor, the exhibition room Artebidea, today Artegunea, and Jakinbide will be maintained, which aims to “generate questions and invite people to build their own knowledge through these questions”. On the first floor the Kutxa Club will continue.
Science, descendant of the Eureka museum?
The largest space will be occupied by the Science Road of the fourth floor, where the contents related to science will be worked through the museum elements and other activities. Aizpurua and Gómez do not clarify whether some materials from the Eureka Museum of Sciences will be transferred to this area, as their composition is still being studied. The Miramón building will be closed in any case by the middle of 2026.
Kutxa wants to continue with the “interdisciplinarity and public-private collaboration” of the Tabakalera centre, inspired by the Science Museum in Amsterdam or the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie in Paris. The latter, with a trajectory of 40 years, receives four million visitors a year and is one of the main references at the global level.
“We have chosen – as Gómez explained – the creation of a new and innovative equipment that we have configured to respond in the broadest sense to the needs of our community.” In addition, the director of innovation stressed that STEAM (acronym for science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) has projected Atenea as a space for knowledge and transmission: “To encourage everyone to reflect and be more critical of what we hear and read.”
Kutxa decided to become a banking foundation in 2014, when an employer acquired the decision, and Kutxabank currently has 32%. Among others, it finances its social action through the dividends generated by the bank.