Voces del Prado

Research areas

José María Luzón Nogué, Museum Director, 1994-1996

In all modesty, there were a few topics that I wanted to get going. There were some competitive exams to enter the Corps of Archivists, and whoever passed was in. But there were other people who, even though they hadn't passed any exams, were very well-prepared and knew how to work in archives. We hired them, I think there were ten altogether, for not more than a year, so that they could look around in archives: the Royal Archive, the Archive of Alcalá de Henares, the National History Archive, the Museum Archive, for research on a series of topics. First of all, we wanted documents related to the history of the building. Secondly, documents on the restoration of paintings. Third of all, documents on the picture frames, because hundreds of frames had accumulated which had been removed from paintings when they arrived and were replaced with other frames. I saw that we might have a history of picture frames in Spain waiting to be written. Right now I don't remember what the fourth area was.
With the four topics, once everything had been compiled and put into the digital database, I took the part on the building and gave it to a great specialist on Juan de Villanueva, who had written his doctoral dissertation on Villanueva, and told him, “Take all this and write a book”. So Pedro Monleón used it for a book on Juan de Villanueva.
I've asked about the other topics and the answers were, “Oh, we've lost it. Must have been deleted.” Nobody has taken care of it. Since I had to leave suddenly I couldn't follow up on those things but I have asked, because I expect there should be some research on those topics today. There are interesting areas of research in the Prado today. Important work was done, not only in the Prado, generally at every place where I have been. And then I see that things aren't completed because it's hard to convey the fact that a museum is a research centre--sometimes it's hard to explain that.