Voces del Prado

Mondays at the Museum closed to the public

Nuria de Miguel Poch, General Secretary of the Friends of the Museo del Prado Foundation, 1989-Up to date

It was not the sophisticated Museum it is today, and it was more comfortable, because we weren't too many, we all knew each other.
It was all very simple because the Director was the one in charge. Then came the four curators, the guards and then two clear figures of authority, Pedro Sobrino and Nicolás Madrid. They were top brass and they knew how to keep things running. Then things were simple and easy, and of course there were some shortfalls, which thank God have been overcome as the years went by.
Mondays are among my earliest memories of the Museum. It closed on Mondays, and we now forget how wonderful it was that it should close on Mondays, because many courses took place in front of the paintings.
It was wonderful to be in the Museum halls when it was closed, everything so silent and calm, with one of the curators explaining things about a painting to us, because we've been up and down the Museum hundreds of times. The only thing that disrupted the calm setting were two of the guards, who we had known forever, and on Mondays, instead of their uniform they would put on these grey overalls and go around with some wonderful feather dusters, made of ostrich feathers, silently dusting the paintings in the halls where we were. The women attending the courses would have loved to have owned feather dusters like those. They always commented “What wonderful feather dusters, and they replied, “Yes, made from ostrich feathers.” They let you touch them and it was truly wonderful.