Voces del Prado

The 1980’s: Working Side by Side with Pérez Sánchez

Mercedes Orihuela Maeso, Conservator of the Service of Deposits, 1975-What's on

As of this point, based on a project set up by Alfonso Pérez Sánchez, who had promised to achieve independent status for the Museum (which came in 1985), we began to draw up a computerised inventory (using Olivetti machines) of the works located inside the Prado and, naturally, those placed outside the Museum, a list we’d already compiled. We did the inventory of the Royal Collection, the inventory of the Museo de la Trinidad, the Inventory of New Acquisitions, the Inventory of Tapestries, the Inventory of Tapestry Cartoons, and I don’t know whether I’m forgetting some other inventory, which I possibly am. And so we began to work on these inventories one by one. I worked side by side with Pérez Sánchez and one of the management assistants, María Merino, who was the person entrusted with typing up all of the inventory entries, which we placed in the left-hand column, whilst in the right-hand column we indicated the current situation of the work, its location, its updated catalogue number and also a small photograph in the middle, furnished by the Museum photographer, Carlos Manso. In this manner, by 1996 or 1997 we had completed all the inventories of the founding collections. We finished in December 1996. And as I said, María Merino was a great help, she really was.
And after that, everything was much easier. The media have changed at the Deposits Service. And so have the laws. Based on our experience, we ourselves forced the creation of the first decree on deposited works, a piece of legislation that King Juan Carlos signed in Baqueira Beret in around 1980 or 1981. I’ll never forget that. A few years later [1985], the Historical Heritage Law was passed, and in 1987 deposited works were also regulated in a decree [Regulations on State-Owned Museums and the Spanish Museum System], although this legislation was not devoted exclusively to deposits. In my view, the latter decree was considerably inferior to the previous law, given that it was somewhat more lax. However, at least we have some legal support with which to continue our work. Our investigation into the Museum’s deposited works was the first that was ever carried out and, perhaps because it was the most extensive, it has served as the model to be followed by all Spanish museums that have works deposited elsewhere.