Miguel Falomir, director of the Prado: “The museum does not need a single more visitor” | Culture | EUROtoday

In 2025, for the third consecutive 12 months, the Prado Museum broke its greatest historic file, with 3.5 million guests. A number of weeks after the determine was identified, Miguel Falomir, director of the establishment, assessed the info through the presentation of this 12 months’s momentary exhibitions: “The museum does not need a single more visitor, what it probably needs is a different profile.”

In Spain, till now, no museum had thought-about any kind of measure to achieve that difficult steadiness between attaining the duty of disseminating the heritage of a rustic with out turning into a vacationer attraction. In Falomir’s personal phrases: “Going to the Prado cannot be like riding the subway during rush hour.” To keep away from this, the supervisor has superior that the museum is getting ready a plan to realize that steadiness and “increase the quality of the visit.”

For the second, Falomir has restricted himself to asserting that the museum is finding out variables similar to optimizing the area of greater than 70,000 sq. meters, which beginning in 2028 might be expanded with the inauguration of the Salón de Reinos, nonetheless below development, which can acquire 2,500 extra sq. meters for exhibitions. The challenge is signed by the British architect Norman Foster and the Spanish Carlos Rubio, and is positioned subsequent to the Casón del Buen Retiro, within the neighborhood of the Prado.

“We will also have to resize the size of the visiting groups, rethink the accesses so that so many people do not accumulate in some…”, listed the director of the Prado.

The common customer to the museum is overseas (75.85%), Falomir recalled. “Even so, we are the museum that most nationals visit,” he added, “but we want more to come.” To obtain this, they are going to suggest new initiatives such because the Prado at night time, one of many actions that pulls essentially the most Spaniards. Once a month, on a Saturday night time, the establishment opens its doorways without spending a dime and contours wrap across the constructing to enter. This kind of zero-cost actions, similar to admission beginning at one hour within the afternoon, accounted for 45% of visits, adopted by 44.7% who paid the conventional value.

“The big problem with large museums is that the visitor is sovereign. That is, we do not know what they are going to do on each visit, what they are going to see, how many hours they are going to stay… We have to think about what to do so that the public is not only interested in iconic works, for example,” defined Falomir, who additionally identified that the coverage of prohibiting images within the rooms “has been effective.” Almost half of the viewers was between 14 and 34 years outdated and ladies accounted for 53%.

In Europe, particularly after the tip of the covid confinement, massive museums such because the Louvre carried out completely different measures to limit capability which have continued till now. The French museum solely admits 30,000 folks a day from 2022, and a few rooms are managed with time slots and advance gross sales to keep away from crowds, along with growing the value of tickets for guests from exterior the European Union. “The Prado is between eight and nine times smaller than the Louvre, with more than nine million visitors a year. At the moment we are not collapsing, but we want to continue offering a pleasant experience,” mentioned Falomir.

In 2026, the Prado will focus its programming on thematic exhibitions after 2025 filled with main monographs such because the one devoted to the artist Mengs. “We try to cover a wide spectrum of topics, it is the museum’s obligation,” defined the director through the presentation. This change, frequent within the museum, has to do with “the crystallization of the lines of work,” within the phrases of the director. That is, the tasks attain the theaters after years of labor.

Falomir has superior that reveals like In the style of Italy, Spain and Mediterranean Gothic (1320-1420)the primary main certainly one of this course, devoted to exhibiting the big affect of Italian creation on the inventive panorama of the Middle Ages within the Spanish kingdoms, could not have the identical response as that of Veronese. “We assume this because we must take into account that the majority of visitors come to see the permanent collection and that takes pressure off of us to develop the exhibition program. We are privileged,” mentioned the director.

Other exhibitions

The Museum will vindicate the position that queens Isabel de Farnese, Christina of Sweden and Philip IV’s personal spouse have in its historical past with the exhibition Mariana of Austria. Another exhibition might be Rilke and Spanish artworkon the centenary of the writer’s loss of life. In Meadow. twenty first century, There might be reflection on how the artwork gallery ought to “reinvent” itself and never “rest on its laurels” to proceed sustaining the “cultural leadership it has until now,” within the phrases of Falomir.

At the tip of the 12 months it is going to be inaugurated Hans Baldung Grienin regards to the determine of the German Renaissance painter; and on pictures the Prado presents the samples The Multiplied Meadow. Photography as shared reminiscence y The artist’s universe earlier than the digicam. They full the programming, Valeriano D. Bécquer. The work of customs, Ricardo de Madrazo. Drawings and watercolors, The portray of starvationwherein the story of this portray might be informed, which went from being one of the crucial valued within the Prado to “little more than a joke,” the director has introduced.