Voces del Prado

Gustavo Torner: An Absolutely Exquisite Sensibility

Fernando Checa Cremades, Museum Director, 1996-2001

Alongside the curators of each of the parts of the Museum’s collection, the key figure was Gustavo Torner, as part of the project to reorganise the whole of the Museo del Prado, which, as I have said, was the great work of my life. With Gustavo Torner I not only learned how to hang pictures, but to appreciate art and appreciate the art of hanging, art on a wall, art in a room, art in a hall. I learned how the light, the ground, the colour of the floor, the colour of a wall… influence the picture. We spent whole afternoons determining the shade of a wall. Torner is a man who had an absolutely exquisite sensibility. He had worked on other occasions at the Museo del Prado, but during those years he was really my right-hand man. Gustavo isn’t only good at these things, but he’s also an excellent person and a marvellous curator. He’s amiable, educated and, as I’ve said before, highly refined. I’ve spent some of my best moments during those long sessions at the Museum, at his home in Madrid or in Cuenca. I’d go to his house at four in the afternoon and come out at eleven at night. During those one-on-one sessions we’d talk about anything and everything; out of those six or seven hours we’d devote at least three or four to the layout of each of the works of art at an exhibition or other aspects of the Museum.