Voces del Prado

2002: A Museum to Be Expanded and Organised

Gabriele Finaldi, Assistant Director of Conservation and Research, 2002-2015

I arrived at the Museum in 2002 and, in effect, there was a great deal to do. The Museum needed to fulfil its vocation as a grand international institution, since the Museo del Prado is obviously one of the five or six best museums in the world and, as an art museum, it’s amongst the select few. Greater clarity was required regarding what the Museum had to do, how it needed to be presented and how it had to be organised. And another pending issue related to how it should be presented to the international scene.
We were coming out of a situation in which there had been a sudden, instantaneous and unexpected change of Director, in which respect there were no exhibitions planned. The Museum was lacking in staff and budget. Construction on the extension had commenced, but certain doubts remained regarding the expansion and what it would contribute to the Museum.
When the public arrived, they passed directly from the entrance into the halls. Many people loved this, because they simply passed the threshold and were then standing in front of a Titian, in a matter of seconds. However, a modern and metropolitan museum, one visited by an international public accustomed to the great museums, required better organisation and a reception area. And it required better explanation, given that the descriptive labels were exclusively in Spanish, when 60% of our visitors were foreign. These were highly important aspects. The Government recognised that it needed to increase the size of the staff and endow the Museum with a larger budget. After ten years working as a curator in London, all of this was a highly attractive challenge for me.