Initial Contact with the Museum

Manuela Mena Marqués, Head of the Department of Conservation of 18th Century Painting and Goya, 1978-2019

My name is Manuela Mena Marqués and I arrived at the Museum yesterday.
I first arrived at the Museo del Prado in 1978. I received a grant from the Juan March Foundation to study Italian drawings of the eighteenth century in Madrid’s collections, which also included the drawings at the Museo del Prado. At that time the Assistant Director was Alfonso Pérez Sánchez, who had been one of my lecturers and had supervised my doctoral thesis. This was the manner in which I joined the Museum; not in an informal manner, but as an external researcher.
At that time the Museum Archive was kept in a private room, closed to the public, along a long passageway on a mezzanine level in the main building. This room also housed all of the cabinets containing the Drawings Collection. They give me a small table to sit at.
This first contact with the Museo del Prado made me see that I didn’t want to continue at university, even though this had been my goal, but that I wanted to devote myself fully to the Museo del Prado. I don’t recall my first day as a public employee at the Museum, but I do remember the first day I arrived at the Prado with a grant from the March Foundation to study the drawings. I recall that day sitting at the small table they’d set up for me. Previously, I’d never left any of my things in the places I had been, places that were many and very important. I’d never left anything of mine there for the following day. I’d always brought my bag back with me, together with my purse and all my things, and then I’d returned the following day. But I’d never left anything. But on that particular day I opened the miserable little draw on that shabby little table and I left my pencil, eraser and small notebook in there so I’d have them there for the following day. That I do remember.