Which artist created Maman, the giant spider sculpture displayed at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao?

Louise Bourgeois created Maman, the giant spider sculpture displayed at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. The monumental bronze, stainless-steel, and marble work belongs to Bourgeois’s recurring series of spider sculptures and stands outside the museum as a major public artwork.

Bourgeois associated the spider with her mother, who worked as a weaver and was remembered as protective and industrious. The spider’s apparent threat is therefore paired with ideas of care, strength, and family memory. Maman was created in 1999 and has been exhibited in several cities, so Bilbao is one location rather than the sculpture’s only home.

Maman is frequently mixed up with Puppy, Jeff Koons’s flower-covered dog at the same museum. They are separate works by different artists: Bourgeois’s sculpture has a spider form, while Koons’s installation uses living plants to create a canine figure.