Voces del Prado

A Museum for all

Alicia Quintana Martínez, Head of the Education Service, 1983-2007

We planned travelling exhibitions such as the "Circulating Museum", an invention of the Educational Missions during the Republic. It sought nothing more and yet nothing less than the mission at hand. The secretary and I did everything at the carpentry in the Museum, sticking pictures and preparing canvases and boxes, an "Invitation to the Prado Museum", that’s what we called it. It consisted of seven fairly large boxes, with reproductions presented as if they were paintings, with large text and explanations, and we rented it to go on display at schools. At the time there were no photographic reproductions; we used what we called "oil art", photographic reproductions on canvas. We had to adapt to the size that was available. We had a small reproduction of Durer’s Self-portrait, and more or less the same for Las Meninas. We sought nothing more and yet nothing less with the two sets that were circulating.
The most interesting program for me was the one we ran at military premises and especially at some prisons. At one of the prisons there was a man who said, "This Murillo, with all those children, must have been a paedophile. "Another man with the same kind of mindset and a similar age, who happened to like paintings by Botticelli, especially the one based on The Decameron, commented, "Tomorrow I’m going to the library to see if they’ve got the Decameron". Another inmate said, "But you can’t read", to which he answered, "I’ll find someone to read it to me." In other words, there was a magnificent atmosphere at prison, especially with the lectures we gave there.
Later, when the Argentinean Isabel Caride came on board, she resorted to her impressive creativity and made two educational suitcases, two exhibitions that became "The Travelling Meninas," with everything about The Meninas in two large boxes. We even hired a painter so that he could paint Las Meninas for us in several stages. In other words, he started out by drawing it (although that’s not how Velázquez did it), then further preparations and the rest of the layers. We got a special permission for the painter to be alone in the hall where The Meninas was kept when the Museum was closed, and we thought he might have a breakdown because he was absolutely thrilled.
These were classroom exhibitions, set up by the teacher in the classroom and used as working materials. The other ones were at school level. It was quite a struggle to move those exhibitions around. When we first prepared them we were at the Casón but we were subsequently transferred. We went to Villahermosa, then in the little north house on Villanueva; then they took us to Claudio Coello, a truly crazy move, because it was a building from the Villaescusa estate and it was terrible being there, seven km away from the Museum. On Wednesdays I would come here at lunch time, to take a look and see what was new at the library. In those days we lugged the exhibitions from one place to another. The boxes, for instance, were at Claudio Coello, and they'd come with vans from schools to pick them up. It was quite a load, but the success made it worth the effort. Those were the outward activities, aside from going to give speeches at teacher centres, tend to special visitors, for instance special education centres. It was a rewarding experience and we worked an awful lot.