Prado. 21st Century

Sections of the exhibition

1. A museum in transformation
2. 1.1 The Museo del Prado Campus
2. The growth of a collection 
3. 2.1 European painting and sculpture up to the Renaissance
4. 2.2 Renaissance and Baroque
5. 2.3 The eighteenth century and Goya
6. 2.4 Nineteenth and twentieth centuries
3. New acquisition strategies for an evolving collection
4. 3.1 The material nature of the work of art: understanding the creative process
5. 3.2 Sketchbooks and print albums
6. 3.3 Women in the history of art
7. 3.4 A new artistic discipline: the photography collection
8. 3.5 The miniatures collection
9. 3.6 The Library and Archive: the construction of a knowledge centre
4. Core functions of a modern museum
5. 4.1 Writing about the Museum: publishing activity
6. 4.2 Research and training: the Study Centre
7. 4.3 Conserving and analysing: restoration and technical study of the collection
8. 4.4 Mediating and engaging: education at the Museum
9. 4.5 Sharing the collection: a museum without frontiers
10. 4.6 Visibility: the drive to communicate

THE EXHIBITION

This exhibition presents a survey of the process of transformation which the Museo del Prado has undergone over the last quarter of a century. Through works of art acquired during this period and a series of statistical, object-based, photographic and documentary comparisons, it reveals the recent history of an active and dynamic museum: a living and open institution which, building on the work of generations of staff, lenders, donors, legatees, sponsors, various boards of trustees, the Fundación Amigos del Museo del Prado and others, has evolved over the past twenty-five years to achieve a leading position among the world’s great museums. This reality has come about not only due to the excellence of the Museum’s collections but also to the efficiency of its financial and administrative management, the solidity of its academic project, its research and training mission, educational drive, consolidated publications strategy, external projection, communicative strength and its reception by society as a whole through its committed openness towards that society as well as through an increasingly close and direct relationship with visitors, to whom it aims to offer an experience of the highest quality.

The first part of the exhibition is devoted to a review of the Museum’s complete transformation in recent times from the perspective of its spaces. The second section focuses on the Prado’s remarkable collections, which continue to grow in a process of continual evolution, year after year. This presentation can only include a small but representative selection of the acquisitions made in the last twenty-five years, organised chronologically and thematically, as a testament to the work of those who made this transformation possible and the means by which they achieved it. A third section examines those areas of the collection that are particularly notable for having come into being or grown in size over this period: albums and prints, miniatures, photographs, the work of women artists, and more. In order to visually express the changes the institution has undergone and bring them closer to visitors, each area of the exhibition features objects that reflect different facets of this transformation: museography, conservation, visitor services, accessibility, inclusivity, sustainability, corporate image, and the involvement of the community in the Museum’s development, among others.

In the next section the exhibition continues with an overview of various departments of the Museum and their work, which exemplify this drive: the significant publishing output of the last twenty-five years, outstanding both quantitatively and for its academic rigour; different aspects relating to the effective training activities taking place at the museum’s Study Centre, founded in 2009; the outstanding level of quality attained in recent times by the Department of Restoration and Technical Documentation, which has placed it at the forefront of the most important restoration departments in the world; the wide-ranging and cutting-edge educational programme, which has succeeded in reaching all sectors of the public and addressing the most pressing debates of our time; the national and international projection—vigorous, rigorous, and focused on all its aspects and facets—which this institution has acquired; and the dynamic and innovative communications strategy developed and sustained in recent years, which has been recognised with a series of awards and accolades.