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When the Museum acquired independent status in 1985 it was decreed that its inventories had to be published, a task undertaken by my friend Mercedes Orihuela, another person whom I have had the good fortune to have met through working at the Prado, as she really is a friend. We’ve been friends from the start and she’s someone whom I met through being here. She took on the task of publishing all that.
Another commitment was that of computerising the Museum’s collections. The company contracted wasn’t a specialised art one so the lists were compiled at the Museum. The company’s task was to create a computer programme.
That was the 1980s. We had a continuous paper stack printer which, in order to print out the lists of the paintings in the Museum, had to be left running on Friday in the hope that the paper hadn’t run out on Monday as it was a continuous paper stack. At that point the entries ran: artist, title, inventory number, location; all codes and little more. There was no option to add anything else, no photographs or anything. If you moved an art piece it didn’t remember the previous movement. It was data printed on continuous paper and was practically useless. We had everything recorded on a stack of paper, little else. Natividad Galindo did a fantastic job and produced entries for all the works. Aside from the already existing ones she had photos on which she noted on the reverse every movement of the ones that were moved. When the photo – which had a space on the back for writing on – was filled up she added another piece of paper. By these means we compiled a history of those movements from the moment she started.
So Natividad Galindo, Mercedes Orihuela, the computer girl, Luis Castillo and I started to devise a programme of the type the Museum needed: inputting information and starting to design it.
In 1996 I was still working with the Manuela Mena, the deputy director, but at that point Fernando Checa was appointed director and he didn’t want a deputy director so Manuela became a curator and I stopped working for her. At one point it was decided to remove me from my position and move me to a secretarial pool. I received an official communication from the administration department. On the following Monday I went to speak to the director, Fernando Checa, whom I knew because we’d been at university together, and I told him I had received a notification from administration and that I didn’t agree with it because I wasn’t going to any secretarial pool given that I wasn’t a civil servant but a contracted staff member. Furthermore, I told him that I thought I was more useful doing what I was doing than where they were thinking of sending me. He told me not to worry and that I should carry on with what I was doing. But as I’d received it all in writing I wanted written confirmation that I could continue with what I was working on. He said “of course”.
Andrés Gutiérrez Husillos, who went on to head the department of Documentation, Archive and Library, was rather astonished when he arrived at the way I’d set up a programme of this type. The fact that the Museum has its current programme is because I started it. If I’d left it, it wouldn’t have existed. There would be something else, or it would be done differently, but it certainly wouldn’t be the one we know today.
She joined the Museum as typist and secretary to the directors, then going on to the Documentation and Archives Area in 1973, where she is responsible for the systematic filing of reports from the Restoration workshop, among other duties.
Interview recorded on May 03, 2018
