Baroque, sculpture and expectations of recovering the number of visitors before the pandemic are the three general lines that will mark the programming of the Prado Museum in 2023. This was announced this Tuesday by its director, Miguel Falomir, who detailed what the activities will be that the institution will develop during the course. Guido Reni and Francisco Herrera ‘El Mozo’ will be the protagonists of the spring of the art gallery, which will also host Spanish paintings from the Frick Collection and will participate in the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the death of Francisco Picasso.
In 2022 we went to museums more, almost like before the pandemic
Moreover
“We are confident that it will be the year of full recovery”, indicated the manager, “the evolution is very positive but we have not yet reached pre-pandemic levels”. Of course, they have reasons to be optimistic: The final week of 2022 was the best in the institution’s history.
baroque spring
The first semester of the museum will be dedicated to Baroque painters. The most important exhibition will be the one dedicated to Guido Reni, which will open its doors from 28 March to 9 July. As anticipated by the director, it will be “the largest exhibition ever dedicated to the artist to date”. Organized in collaboration with the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, it will offer a broad review of the Bolognese master’s contribution to the art of his time, starting with the most recent historiographical contributions and paying particular attention to his link with Spain, which manifested itself in the collecting of his works by the crown and the high aristocracy.
For this, it will have around 100 works which will include painting, sculpture and graphics. Many of them can be seen for the first time. To these will be added that of other artists of the 16th and 17th centuries who were also protagonists of this period, such as Titian, the Carraccis, Caravaggio, Zurbarán, Ribera and Murillo. A third of the pieces belong to the collection of the Prado Museum, which will host another fifty from the Musée du Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery in London.
From 25 April, the exhibition will coexist with the one dedicated to Francisco Herrera ‘el Mozo’. “This artist was a rare bird within the Spanish art scene due to his versatility,” Falomir described. It is no coincidence that he drew pictorial compositions on canvas, frescoes, engravings, altarpieces, architectures, theatrical sets and tapestries; and was in charge of the funeral ceremonies. The exhibition, which will remain open until July 30, will highlight his decisive stay in Italy, in which his training as a draftsman and painter of fish still lifes stands out, as well as the influence of his training in Seville with his father, Francisco de Herrera “the old man” as engraver; and his relationship with Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, contrasting their ways of understanding painting.
New narratives and art of the past
“The exhibitions in the second semester will be more conceptual,” explained the director. Reverse, the hidden side, will explore side B of the pictorial support from 7 November 2023 to 3 March 2024. “Part of the paradoxical reality that a quarter of the surface of the great masterpiece of the Prado Museum, Las Meninasis occupied by the back of a painting,” he shared, “which will be the belated reason”.
The research on the museum collections, which include complete photographic documentation, and the restoration interventions that also recover the supports, have contributed to revealing the messages, the testimonies and the data contained in that part of the art to which much attention had not been paid . “It offers a very different approach to what the artwork is as an object, very new,” she expressed.
It will arrive on October 10th The lost mirror The medieval image of the Jew and Judaism, which will remain open until 14 January 2024. Its aim is to show how Spanish art of the late Middle Ages was the scene of the complex and multifaceted construction of the image of the Jew. Figurative strategies have gone far beyond mere stigmatization or demonization and have also given rise to positive images that show coexistence and cultural exchange.
Another of the jewels of the season promises to be Spanish painting from the Frick Collection, which will be exhibited in the Villanueva building between March 7 and July 2. “An institution that by statute does not allow the loan of its works”, recalled Falomir, but thanks to the works he is creating, it has opened up to collaboration with other institutions. “It won’t be a very large but exquisite set of works by Goya, Murillo, El Greco and Velázquez,” he said.
The Villanueva building will also exhibit the National Art Gallery’s contribution to the 50th anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death. It will reopen its doors on June 13 picasso—Greek, open until 17 September. The exhibition will try to answer “to what extent the lessons learned by El Greco were present in the genesis of Cubism”. Emilio Sanchez Perrier. Drawings (from 5 May to 30 July) e The design for engraving in Spain illustrated. From Carmona to Goya (October 17 to January 14) will be other exhibitions of the season.
Bet on the sculpture in the permanent collection
The Prado Museum will continue to work on its permanent collection, “betting to give sculpture back the importance it should always have”. For this they will present a new gallery installation. There will also be a monographic session dedicated to the copying of works of art and the renovation of the European Naturalism Halls will take place.
Within the itineraries proposed by the centre, there will be encrypted realities. Calderón de la Barca and painting (from 9 May to 10 September) e The importance of the frame in painting (from November 2023 to March 2024). The second, as Falomir stated, “will draw attention to that part of the artwork which is sometimes thought to be extraneous. We will see what its role and significance is within the museum”.
In 2023 the itinerant activities will be maintained, which will have three: The century of the portrait. The image of 19th century societywhich will start from Barcelona and then move to Zaragoza; The Prado in the streets, who after touring Extremadura last year, will now travel to Malaga; Y Today is the moment of the Pradoinitiative that makes the art gallery accessible to people with visual impairments through the display of six relief images corresponding to different genres and artistic styles.
“The Prado Study Center is one of our most important initiatives and one of those that has suffered the most during the pandemic,” Falomir lamented. For 2023 they have planned the Chair which will be directed by Alexander Nagel, professor of Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University; and the Pérez-Llorca Conference of the poet, essayist and translator Anne Carson, Princess of Asturias Award 2020. Among the different symposia that will be held, the director highlighted Female protagonists in the formation of the collections of the Museo del Prado II. From Isabel de Borbón to Mariana de Neoburgo (6 and 7 March).
Beyond the programming, the director of the art gallery has indicated that in January they will make public the report on the works of dubious origin that the institution contains. In the same way, it pronounced itself on the activists who glued their hands to the frames of Goya’s ‘Las Majas’ last November. “We have already explained that the museum had tightened its security measures, but that there was a certain inevitability. If someone wants to attack a work of art, even placing a policeman in each one, it can happen,” Falomir assured.
“It’s more about public opinion than taking coercive measures,” he added, “and public opinion has responded well seeing that this is not the way to vindicate some ideas, which are legitimate, but there is another way to do it”. “The attacks were counterproductive for those who committed them”, he concluded, “let’s hope they do not happen again”.
