Voces del Prado

A “homely little museum”

Ana Gutiérrez Márquez, Senior Technician of Museums (Conservation of 19th Century Painting), 1975-2018

When I arrived at the Casón it was what you might call a “homely little museum”. It was an entity that derived from an already established museum, the Museo del Arte Moderno. When that was split up and closed down its 19th-century collections passed to the Prado. And they went to a building that was separate from the main one, which was the Casón del Buen Retiro.
There was a head of it, don Joaquín de la Puente, who came from the Museo de Arte Moderno’s staff and who was one of the Prado’s three deputy directors. Those of us in the Casón had almost no relationship with the Museo del Prado although functionally the Casón was part of the Museum. The Casón retained its status as a museum and in the early years I remember that we functioned with a certain degree of autonomy.
The team was extremely small. There was don Joaquín de la Fuente who was in charge. He had a secretary, Matilde Muñoz, who was a delightful, really nice girl who looked after all of us young ones doing work experience as she wasn’t much older than us. If we had any little problem she always stood up for us. I’ve got such fantastic memories of her. There were also us girls doing work experience. Then there was a very small team of warders and a chief warder, Pepe Illán, who we had a lot of disagreements with as he was the one who tried to keep us all in order, but I have very fond and unforgettable memories of him.
No one stayed from the four or five of us from my generation. But after that Felicidad Elipe and Antonio Solano did work experience and I think of the people who did it then, they’re the only people now in the Museum.