Voces del Prado

Intellectual excellence

Nuria de Miguel Poch, General Secretary of the Friends of the Museo del Prado Foundation, 1989-What's on

When we organized the first courses, which we wanted to be open to the academic world and to international museums, it was very hard to reach professors.
Nobody had heard of the Friends of the Prado Museum Foundation. Despite the renown of the Prado Museum, it was difficult.
Now all that has been overcome, now we've got many years of courses behind us. We have a collection backing us, and now it's much easier to get people on the phone. Memories of the early years can be terrifying, when the academic director, Francisco Calvo Serraller, gave us the list of those we had to call. It was a matter of picking up the phone and calling people we admire so much, who we know were of an unreachable status for us, getting them on the phone and having them listen to us and come our way. Also from the beginning our goal with these courses was to raise the professional status of all professors, from the start we treated them as well as we could, in other words, if the most we could pay them was 100, we made an effort to push it up to 200. If they travelled in, we went to pick them up at the airport. We've struggled with all the hotels in the vicinity to get free rooms, and the best ones, for the professors. All that served to build up a sense of treating people well and that it was quite an invitation, we didn't forget about you and it was worthwhile to come in. Then they came to the Prado Museum, they were here, and then the exchange was between them and the Museum. I remember often calling a professor, Svetlana Alpers, of great renown at the time, who had written some books on Rubens that we thought were superb. Professor Calvo Serraller challenged us every year to get her to come and if we didn't manage to do it the blame was on us. She was truly charming. Even though she declined, she always left an opening for the future. So the following year I'd say, “What about this year?” It went on for years. In the end you realize that it pays to insist. Finally she came and she even repeated. And I know she speaks well of us, and has helped in getting other professors to come here afterwards, thanks to what she's said about us.