MADRID IS REPLETE with new museum extensions. After a few false starts, much controversy and a protracted period of construction, last year the Museo del Prado opened the doors of its new annexe designed by Rafael Moneo. He is, of course, no stranger to museum architecture, the example closest to the Prado being the complete rebuilding of the interior of the Palacio de Villahermosa across the road, the home of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. That museum has recently also been significantly enlarged through the acquisition of two adjacent buildings which were redesigned by the architects Manuel Baquero and Francesc Plá. Since 2004 they have housed the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza collection, initially on loan at no fee for a period of eleven years, although the Ministry of Culture and the Baroness have made clear their wish to reach an agreement that will enable the collection to be on permanent display at the Museum. Meanwhile, in 2005 the Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofía opened a new entrance-cum-wing designed by Jean Nouvel.
Of these three, the Prado has emerged triumphant. It is no secret that the entire process was exceptionally problematic; Ministers of Culture came and went, protests from local residents were vehement, while campaigns were conducted in the press. In the light of these tensions it is ironic that it should be so difficult to tell for anyone now strolling along the Paseo del Prado that there is such a thing as an extension to the Museum at all. Discreetly tucked away at the back of Juan de Villanueva’s main building and largely below street level, the annexe is certainly understated. This is in fact a tremendous blessing, and in the current climate in which it is often felt that the museum building itself should be as much, if not more, of an ‘experience’ than what is on display, it comes as a great relief. The Museum has evidently not felt the need to dance to the tune of a (younger) public who like to be seen visiting trendy locations; however much such an approach may pump up visitor numbers, as it certainly has done, for instance, at London’s Tate Modern, the question is what this new public takes away from its ‘experience’ (and how old-fashioned that word now begins to sound). The Prado knows its strengths and its emphasis on the art itself and scholarship has in recent years also come to the fore in a number of ambitious exhibitions (Titian, Manet, Tintoretto, Patinir and, currently, The Renaissance Portrait, reviewed on pp.637–39 below). That the Museum has thus also become a major player in the international exhibitions circuit and has had to succumb to the pressures of tit-for-tat loan agreements is perhaps an unfortunate consequence.
To accommodate such large exhibitions, the Prado no longer needs to dismantle part of its permanent display by rearranging the main galleries. The extension is reached either by going through the apse-shaped entrance hall opposite the Velázquez entrance or via the underground link at the east side of the building, although, confusingly, tickets still have to be bought first at the Goya entrance to the north. From the vast foyer in the underground link, escalators lead to the extension proper, an austere square building on top of the slope behind the old Prado. It encloses the cloister adjacent to the sixteenth-century church of San Jerónimo el Real, which is majestically sited on the hill. The cloister had long been left to crumble but has now been completely reconstructed and restored and is encased within Moneo’s building under a massive skylight, where it appears almost as a work of art in its own right. A large glass-and-steel light shaft cuts through the cloister’s floor and provides the necessary daylight for the exhibition galleries below (see Fig.78 on p.638 below), relieving them of the claustrophobic feeling that characterises so many subterranean exhibition spaces. Meanwhile the extension and underground link, which together add some fifty per cent extra space to the Museum, are large enough to house, in addition to the foyer, a café and shop; a sizeable lecture hall; a prints and drawings department; much-needed storage for the Prado’s vast collections; and conservation studios that surround the upper tier of the cloister, surely making them among the most beautifully situated conservation studios in the world. All this is fantastically useful, intelligently conceived and, above all, refreshing in its modesty.
Although many similar amenities are now also available at the Reina Sofía, its new entrance can hardly be called unpretentious. A vast canopy stretches over a huge new triangular courtyard, mirroring but certainly no improvement on the cloistered courtyard that has always been at the centre of the eighteenth-century main building. The new courtyard is enclosed by colossal wall-like structures in red fibreglass, rectangular plate glass and grey steel, in which are housed the new exhibition spaces, library, auditorium and restaurant, allowing the four floors of the main building to be dedicated to the permanent collection. The void in the middle is certainly imposing, but is also oppressive and unwelcoming, dwarfing its visitors, who indeed seem to prefer to enter and leave as they used to, on the Calle de Santa Isabel. This is superstar architecture that largely forgets that it is supposed to serve a specific purpose. The new extension to the Thyssen, meanwhile, suffers from a problem of an entirely different nature. The added buildings are unassuming enough (although the replication of the already monotonous interiors of the Palacio de Villahermosa makes a visit to the Museum a rather relentless affair), but the problem here is the arrival of, by comparison to the original core of the Museum, a largely inferior collection that detracts from the overall quality of what the Thyssen has to offer.
If the Prado has ‘lost’ one of its famous Goyas – it has just been announced that the Colossus is most probably not by Goya but by his friend and assistant Asensio Juliá – it has gained a tremendous architectural addition and, last year, a record number of more than two and a half million visitors.