Does Spain break like this? Or is it rather built like that? Is it a small tour of 18 paintings or does it basically mean opening the door to having to lend more masterpieces, to decapitalizing the museum, to the feared, for some, decentralization that ministers Iceta and Urtasun have advocated? What pieces should never leave the Prado Museum? The director of the Prado, Miguel Falomir, today presented the plan of the great Spanish art gallery to send on tour in the coming months works by masters such as Velázquez, El Greco, Rubens, Goya and Murillo to 18 museums throughout Spain, Cartagena to Mérida, Granada, Ceuta, Lleida, San Sebastián or Tudela.
One per museum for a month, with the intention, he said, of “affirming the authentically national character of the Prado”, which, he stressed, has been for him an “obsession” of his seven years of mandate in an institution that “is something more than a museum for many Spaniards”. “It is something we want to do that does not harm anyone and benefits everyone,” he pointed out in response to some questions. “Decapitalize? If someone believes that this is decapitalizing the Prado, we would never lend any work to any exhibition. Of course, then people want us to have good exhibitions in Madrid. This is an initiative of the Prado regardless of who is in charge of the Ministry. It is the commitment to be a national institution in the real sense of the term and not just carry it in name,” Falomir stressed.
In fact, the initiative is not new, because it was already carried out with great success with 12 paintings during the museum’s bicentennial in 2019, and then it began to take shape under the government of Mariano Rajoy. But a few years later, in the midst of strong cultural wars and words like decentralization and decolonization of museums, it has raised alarm in some sectors while achieving the applause of museum directors from all over the world who have attended the presentation of this project that costs 300,000 euros sponsored by Telefónica as one of the events of its centenary.
They are centers such as the Museum of Mallorca, where the spectacular The Sight and the Smell of Brueghel the Younger will arrive in October, the Clock House of Melilla, which will receive Goya’s Cat Fight in April, the Provincial Museum of Lugo, which Velázquez’s Sibyl will go to in June, the Museum of Lleida, to which Beatriz van Hemmema, countess of Oxford, by Van Dyck, will go, the San Telmo Museum of San Sebastián, which will host the powerful Amalia de Llano y Dotres, countess in November of Vilches de Madrazo or the Museum of Fine Arts of Xàtiva, which in September will exhibit the Penitent Magdalena by José de Ribera in front of which the presentation of the project, titled The art that connects, has been made.
“We are here to present not an exhibition that is held in the Prado, but the paintings that are going to be distributed throughout all the autonomous communities from April to the end of the year, we are seeing how we present ourselves in Spain,” stressed the president of the Board of Trustees. of the Prado, Javier Solana, who has observed that “the Prado is more alive than ever.”
Falomir recalled that they already have 3,000 works distributed by institutions throughout Spain, managed through the Prado Extended program, and that they participate in temporary exhibitions and maintain the Prado initiative in the streets. “The intention of reaffirming the authentically national character of the Prado was already one of the main lines of the 2019 bicentennial, and the project as a director that I have the most affection for was then On Tour of Spain, which consisted of taking masterpieces on tour around all the communities and the two autonomous cities. It was successful and exciting, and today it serves as a reference for other museum institutions that are celebrating centenaries.”
And in that emphasis on the national and transterritorial character of the museum during Falomir’s direction now comes The Art That Connects, which brings works ranging from 1613 to 1853, from April 2 to December 8, to museums throughout Spain, works sometimes related to the museum, such as The Embarkation of Saint Paula Romana by Claudio Lorena to the National Museum of Underwater Archeology in Cartagena or Alonso Cano from Granada and his Dead Christ Supported by an Angel to the Museum of Fine Arts in Granada.
“They are heavyweights in the collections and we have selected places that offer us the ideal conditions for the conservation and security of the works and we have tried to avoid big cities, because what would be the point of going to Barcelona where we are already constantly taking works,” he points out, now that precisely the National Museum of Art of Catalonia has the exhibition The Lost Mirror open, about how Spanish art portrayed the Jews, co-produced with the Prado.
When asked what the limits are on loans, the paintings that would not be lent, Falomir points out that there is a common sense list that includes Las Meninas, The Garden of Earthly Delights, The Executions of Goya, The Descent of Van der Weyden or The Annunciation by Fra Angelico that do not lend themselves. “But the lending criteria here have been the same as those we have when we are asked for works for any other exhibition,” he noted. And he has concluded that “I wish we could carry out this program more frequently and not just go for the bicentennial.”
