Voces del Prado

“Are you capable of organising this?”

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

When I finished my museum work experience Joaquín de la Puente, the head of the 19th-century department, which was the one in the Casón at that time, proposed that I organise the library. The library had come from the Museo de Arte Moderno in packets that had been unwrapped there and all the books were still on the floor. So, don Joaquín showed me the room with all those books and he asked me, “Are you capable of organising this?” and of course I was a bit baffled and I replied, “I don’t know how I’m going to do this as I don’t know if I really know enough.” But he replied “Come with me.” And he took me to his office and in a small cupboard there were all the bibliographical treasures. He showed me the three volumes, which are huge tomes, of Pérez Villaamil’s “España artística y monumental”. They’re absolutely marvellous books that he had stored away as real treasures. When I saw them I got inspired and I said of course I could.
I started work but I only knew just about enough about cataloguing books, what I’d been able to study during my degree but not with any real interest. So, the first thing I did was enrol for a course at the Biblioteca Nacional, which these days would be a two-year Masters in Librarianship and Documentation. So I did both things at once; in the mornings I was at the Casón putting into practice the theory I’d learned in the afternoons in the Biblioteca Nacional. When I’d organised the library after a couple of years (I can’t put a precise date on that) don Joaquín started to entrust me with curatorial tasks at the Museum. I was promoted and I moved to an office near to him where I now focused entirely on curatorial work.