Voces del Prado

The Museum Plan for 1997

Fernando Checa Cremades, Museum Director, 1996-2001

The idea was to design a new museum plan, one that was more detailed and would serve as a basis for this second phase of the tender, for the projects that had been selected during the first tender. I had the support of Antonio Fernández Alba, who was an architect, academic and a Member of the Museo del Prado’s Board of Trustees at the time; I could also count on the support of the Chairman of the Board himself, José Antonio Fernández Ordóñez, who was a civil engineer. But the most important issue was: what to do with the pictures? Which ones should and shouldn’t be hung? And where should they be hung? That is to say, this project, which consisted of redesigning the whole Museo del Prado, was really the most important academic project of my life. I would never be asked to undertake something like this ever again. It really was a great opportunity for an art historian. In order to carry out the plan, I could rely on the curators who worked at the time at the Museum, and I also began to follow the specific (but highly effective) advice of the academics and researchers on the Board. The Museo del Prado has around seven thousand pictures, so we had to decide which pictures to include, where to hang them and how to exhibit them in the halls of the Juan de Villanueva Building, based on detailed plans, wall by wall. It was a really huge challenge, but a highly fruitful one. It served to confirm that “this is what we want the expansion for”.