Voces del Prado

Las Meninas. A mirror that reflects us

Miguel Zugaza Miranda, Museum Director, 2002-2017

I’m now director of a marvellous museum, the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum. I invite you all to come and visit us. But it doesn’t have Bosch, it doesn’t have Rubens, Titian or Velázquez. Having been director of the Prado for 15 years and thus feeling myself almost related to those great geniuses, of course you end up missing them. And if there’s one work that everyone singles out in the Prado, a work that tells us so much about where we are in our present moment, it’s Velázquez’s Las Meninas. It explains – particularly for people working in museums – the nature of the material we’re working so closely with, the sensitive nature of what we do at a museum, which is to connect up the modern mind set with art and with painting in particular.
This has to be taken very seriously because it’s a great responsibility and if there’s one emblematic painting that shows us to how appreciate this moving and memorable encounter between a person and a work of art, it’s Las Meninas, I think it’s the best symbol of that. So if there’s one painting I miss, it’s that one, a great work.