The Prado National Museum is widely known for its collection of paintings, but in its constant quest to renew itself and reach out to the public with innovative and surprising proposals—as evidenced by initiatives such as ‘El Prado de Noche’ (The Prado at Night) for night visits—the art gallery is hosting its first exhibition dedicated to photography starting this week.
To achieve the result that can be seen in this new exhibition, entitled El Prado multiplicado: la fotografía como memoria compartida( The Prado Multiplied : Photography asShared Memory), the museum has embarked on an exciting journey into its own archives: an arduous task, considering that the final selection of 44 photographs belongs to “a collection of more than 10,000 photographs of great heritage significance.”
The exhibition can be visited until April 5, 2026, in Room 60 of the Villanueva Building (Paseo del Prado, s/n), a space that the museum has been using since 2009 to present small-scale exhibition projects focused on 19th-century collections.
A photographic tour of the Prado’s hidden collections
Editorial credit: Detail of The Surrender of Breda, by Velázquez Vicente Moreno (1894-1954) Gelatin paper. Signed. c. 1930 Donated by Enriqueta Harris and her nephews José Antonio Buces and Paloma Renard, 2003. HF-1625
The exhibition is also a way of discovering a part of the museum’s own history that has remained hidden from the general public until now. This is evident from the very beginning of the exhibition: the tour starts with one of the first photographs exhibited in the museum in 1899.
The exhibition also highlights renowned companies and photographers such as Juan Laurent, José Lacoste, Braun, Moreno, Anderson, and Hanfstaengl, who “played an essential role in disseminating the image of the museum and masterpieces such as Velázquez’s The Surrender of Breda , “ according to the museum.
Some of these photographs were taken even before the works entered the Prado. But once in the art gallery, the images taken later provide valuable information that goes beyond the artistic sphere.
The Prado, then and now
View of the central gallery of the Prado Museum with a shop selling photographs HF-1229 and current view ‖ Editorial credit: © Museo Nacional del Prado
Visitors to this exhibition will be able to learn about the Prado of the last century and how it has changed over time, from its large rooms and spaces—such as the Central Gallery, the room dedicated to Murillo, and the sculpture gallery—to more seemingly mundane but equally revealing details.
Among these, the art gallery mentions, for example, “the variegation of the paintings on the walls, the furniture and heating of the period, or the fleeting appearance of a person, at a time when photography recorded the empty interiors of the Prado.”