MADRID —
The Prado was not designed to be one of the world’s great art galleries. But as
it celebrates its 200th anniversary this year, Spain’s national museum can
boast of welcoming almost three million visitors a year to what has become one
of Europe’s finest painting collections.
When King
Charles III of Spain commissioned the building in the 1780s, he wanted a museum
of natural science to celebrate the spirit of the Enlightenment. But when his
ultraconservative grandson, Ferdinand VII, came to the throne three decades
later, he put a stop to that. “He wanted to showcase the wealth of his
collection rather than make any kind of contribution to scientific progress,”
said Javier Portús, the curator of an exhibition that celebrates the Prado’s
bicentenary.
“The irony
is that the Prado opened in a period of clearly regressive thinking in Spain,”
he added.
The
exhibition, called “A Place of Memory” and running through March 10, shows how,
right from the beginning, the Prado navigated the often choppy waters of
Spanish politics, as the country went from being an imperial power to a nation
divided by civil war, and then through dictatorship to the democracy it is
today.
