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When Miguel Zugaza was appointed Director of the Museum, he called me and said: “Would you like to work with me? I’d love you to come and help me at the Museo del Prado”. I told him that I was prepared to do so, although it wasn’t clear how it was going to work, nor what position I would occupy nor how it would all be organised. In fact, I’d already arranged a three-month stay in Madrid as a guest of the Museo del Prado, because I was working on a grand exhibition on El Greco to be staged in 2003 in London and the Metropolitan Museum of New York.
So I told Miguel Zugaza: “I’d like to keep this arrangement and take advantage of this time, since it provides an extraordinary opportunity for study”. He told me that that was fine and that, in the meantime, he was going to see what administrative procedure could be applied to enable me to come and work at the Museo del Prado. In principle, he wanted to appoint me as Deputy Director, but there was a tricky administrative problem to be resolved, since to become Deputy Director of the Museo del Prado you had to come from the realm of Spanish government, and I didn’t fulfil this requirement. There was a period in which it all seemed quite impossible that I would be able to work at the Museum.
However, an alternative solution was sought, which consisted of creating a new upper management position, namely that of “Assistant Director”: Assistant Director of Conservation and Research. That was how the issue was resolved. However, the appointment was somewhat curious, because I was coming to the Prado to carry out my three-month study period in the company of my family, and when we were on the ferry from Portsmouth sailing towards Santander, that was when my appointment was proposed to the Museum Trust. Given that mobile phones didn’t work at the time on ships, or at least mine didn’t work, when I reached the port of Santander I found out that I had been appointed Assistant Director of the Museo del Prado. I was practically the last person to find out, because it had already been announced in the press; in fact, that’s virtually how I found out.
Assistant Director of Conservation and Research at the Museum from 2002 to 2015, year in which he was appointed director of The National Gallery in London. At the Museo del Prado he assumed responsibility for the collections, research projects, restoration projects and exhibitions related to the same.
Interview recorded on July 30, 2015
