Balance. Spanish art museums accumulate a drop of 70% in their visitors in 2020
Analysis: Goodbye to the era of monumental museums and giant exhibitions
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If we accept that time is really the things that happen, 2020 has been the year in which it has conjugated all the unforeseen.
And that blow, still in progress, has accelerated the pulses of the world despite having stopped everything.
For the Prado Museum, the slowdown that led to the outbreak of the virus has been (somehow) the possibility of gaining momentum.
In the months that the art gallery was closed, the director Miguel Falomir and his team decided to work as if they had to wake up as soon as possible in a pressing morning.
From that purpose arose the desire to rethink the museum from the mothership: the collection.
In other words, review the funds exposed and adjust them to new criteria.
Take the position at the beginning of the turbulent century and make the Prado the vibrant museum that must be
revising its engine room, its trousseau and (mainly) its staging -physical and digital- fostering a new way of telling art always, which is always different.
Each era develops its sensitivity, each postmodernity has its need to continue mutating, each painting its own life.
With this objective, Falomir announced this morning some of the essential changes that the museum will address throughout 2021, although this will be only the first part of an adventure that requires another year of effort.
"After two months with the rooms closed, we considered the return of the public to the Prado with the exhibition
Reencuentro
. That bet was our test bed to finalize the rearrangement of the collection. We were aware that some proposals that we inherited suffered from a certain anachronism historiographic, so we set out to prioritize change.
A change that is not driven by whim, but by reflection and study
. And, at the same time, with the desire to create a more inclusive museum. There will be a greater presence of women artists. And when the museum's acquisitions close throughout the year, it will be seen that we have opted for works signed by women, as well as
the creation of a specific grant for gender issues
".
This bet also has an exhibition as its axis,
Guests
, which is extended until March 14, and where the role of women in art (artist and model) is recovered within (in a first phase of our plan) of the effervescence of 19th century painting.
But we also want to increase the attention in some phenomena of painting that for too many decades were discarded.
"This is the case of 19th century Filipino art, which is gaining more and more interest."
Painting from the Spanish colonial era
that completes a panoramic view of the 19th century collection, in whose reorganization the first fruits of Falomir's purpose will be seen.
"This part of our pieces look more to the eighteenth century to the twentieth. So we want to
re-read the whole this stretch of the art in Spain. And there will
also add the role of social painting, beyond a box Sorolla here
yet They say that fish is expensive! It
has no representation. "
Recovering for the Prado looks, sensitivities, realities and suspicions that had been buried by a less porous look at the mutations of civic and social interest is one of the main aspects of the long pending path.
"
It is early to give dates of when this process will be completed
", explains the director of the gallery.
"We depend, like everyone else, on the ups and downs of the moment we are in."
But some main issues of space are also clear.
Falomir proposes to use the Villanueva building (in its entirety) as an exhibition space.
This is the case of the Ionic galleries of the institution, until now underused, which will host a large permanent exhibition of classical sculpture.
Or the relocation of the Delfin Treasury.
As well as a more ambitious space on the history of the museum.
Temporary exhibitions return - as far as possible - activating those that 2020 left stranded.
Only the one dedicated to the drawings that William Blake made on the
Divine Comedy
will be suspended
.
The rest will make room on the calendar of the 21st. Among them, the one dedicated to the six
Poems
of Titian, commissioned by Felipe II, one of the most outstanding sets of mythological evocation in Western painting, stands out.
Or the exhibition dedicated to a painter misplaced in history,
Marinus.
Reymerswaele painter
.
"A highly appreciated creator in mid-16th century Spain, but for whom there is no monograph and to whom an exclusive exhibition has never been dedicated.
The Prado is going to do so
."
Ibero-American art in Spain, vice-royal art, will also have a place in 2021. "We will focus on the traces left on the artists from here by the thousands of paintings, sculptures, and goldsmith pieces that arrived from America to Spain from the 16th to the 18th century." .
Falomir did specify dates on the rehabilitation of the Hall of Kingdoms.
"Throughout this year the construction companies will be awarded the tender and in November the works will begin. There is no technical or budgetary reason for the project to be completed."
The process will be four years of architectural work.
"
In 2025 the new space of the Prado will be a reality that we will finally share with the public
."
The journey has begun and the course promises new downloads.
New mornings.
New readings.
More experiences.
Less forgetfulness.
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