Koons’s sculpture depicts a puppy 12.4 meters high, dressed in flowers that cover from top to bottom. The American artist prepared the sculpture for an exhibition held in 1992 in the German city of Arolson. It was installed in the port of Sydney in 1995 and acquired in 1997 by the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation for installation in the atrium of the new Bilbaíno museum within the inaugural exhibition. He stayed for a while at Rockefeller Center Square in New York, and is part of the Guggenheim Collection in Bilbao since he returned to it. In recent decades it has remained under the influence of the atmosphere, and the structure of the sculpture needs works of reform.

Puppy's colorful coat consists of 38,000 flowers seen from outside the chapel. Maintenance is also a job: they change flowers twice a year. A steel structure retains the compost needed by the flowers: About 25 tons. Over time, however, the mechanisms of survival of the sculpture are aging, the irrigation system leaks and some parts of the steel structure have to be changed.

Koons explains that he wanted to bring to a play the balance between the polarity of the Baroque Cathedral and the Church of Europe. In them the symmetric joins the asymmetric, the eternal appears ephemeral, and flowers, plants and animals in the wood carvings. Puppy therefore believes that this is a work on control and abandonment of control: “At some points in our lives, control is very important, but in others, control has no place.” This lack of control, led by the forces of life, shows the uncontrolled growth of the flowers of the sculpture. Puppy is organic, but it picks up the contrast between the “energy of life” and the abstract form in which we create objects. At the bottom, though, there's a double idea. On the one hand, a tribute to the history of gardening and, on the other, the creation of a work that can have a spiritual function for people: that people can gather around in the dialogue about transcendence.

That is the situation and the explanation of the work. The management of the Guggenheim has decided to ask the citizens and visitors for the money needed for the reform of the sculpture. Despite the fact that the museum already has significant public funding and has the most expensive entrance between the museums of the Spanish State, they have opted for collective funding to support its revitalization. What they offer is a certain patronage: the one who pays protects part of the work.

They have made it clear, however, that if the money they receive does not achieve the stated objective, the museum will make the missing part, and it is to be assumed that asking people for money can save a part of the budget and assume the total cost of the reform. The play coincides with the general sense of the work, but it also shows some extremes.

Although the museum, like Puppy, frequently changes flowers and shows the public an attractive exterior, what makes the interior work is not in such good condition. This was reported two days ago by Ane Zelaia Arieta-Araunabeña, head of the ELA services in Bizkaia, in Berria:

“The point is that a museum is not an empty steel and titanium structure, which is based on megalomaniac projects or donation campaigns. The people who keep the museum alive are the workers. However, the management of the Guggenheim de Bilbao, the Basque Government, the City Council of Bilbao and the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, the employers of the institution, headed by the Lehendakari and the Deputy General, have for years been giving poor treatment to workers, especially through subcontracting. And now, of course, like Puppy, the base is in question.”

In recent months the name of the museum has appeared more than once in the news and not in the exhibitions that have been made. In fact, the project to extend the Guggenheim to two Urdaibai sites once again puts the controversy on the warp. The Deputy General of Bizkaia, Unai Rementeria, said that enlargement will take place on European aid, making it clear what the priority of the public institutions is.

Meanwhile, cleaners at the Bilbao Museum have been on strike since 8 June to ensure decent working conditions and to bridge the wage gap. Most of them are women, outsourced, despite having worked in the museum for more than two decades, and the convention has become obsolete. Arieta-Araunabeña has denounced that the management has not offered any solution and has even denied the existence of a wage gap.

The crowdfunding campaign to pay for the Puppy reform has created controversy on social media: people have not seen him with good eyes, they think it has been a mockery. But little by little, he's putting money in. It now stands at around EUR 16,000. Still, much remains for the objective that has been set, a lot of money and not so much time, as the museum director, Juan Ignacio Vidé, expects the works to begin in autumn, and until then the campaign will be open. Meanwhile, people are talking about sculpture, working conditions, the funding of the mueso and the cultural policies of the institutions.