Prado's extension opens after going £63m over budget
Monday, 2 April 2007
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Spain's most famous art museum took a step into the 21st century at the weekend when it unveiled a budget-busting modernist new annex after five years' work.
The red-brick, granite and oak, £92m extension to Madrid's Prado Museum was designed by the Spanish architect Rafael Moneo.
It will give one of Spain's most popular attractions badly needed extra space to show scores of paintings which are at present languishing in store rooms.
The new space has a neo-classical style, blending well with the original 19th-century design of the museum, but allowing plenty of natural light.
The Cloister of Moneo is situated next to Los Jeronimos church, across from the museum's Velazquez room, which holds the Spanish master's most famous work, Las Meninas.
Moneo, a winner of architecture's Nobel, the Pritzker Prize, initially caused controversy with his design because he wanted to incorporate the cloister of the 15th-century Los Jeronimos church, which was removed stone by stone and reassembled inside the extension. A group of Madrid residents took Moneo to court, claiming the project would upset the architectural heritage of the area and the cloister would be ruined.
The legal cases were dismissed by Madrid courts. The relocated cloister sheds daylight on exhibition spaces three floors below and is intended to be devoted principally to sculpture.
Gabriel Finaldi, the Prado's director of conservation, said: "This extension lets the Prado breathe. It brings us in line with other major modern museums." The new exhibition space is connected by underground passageways to the original building. The addition completes the first phase of the controversial extension, which began in 2002 with a budget of £29m and was expected to end in two years.
But after a succession of delays and legal squabbles, the building has taken five years to complete and the bill has soared to £92m.
Responding to the criticism he faced during the project, Moneo said: "This job has been very tough. They have treated me badly. The criticism made me rethink the project and it has made it better. But the truth is I am satisfied. I say this without false modesty. I think it is a good job."
The new complex adds 183,000 square feet to the 312,000 sq ft museum. One of the highlights is a temporary exhibition space that will allow the museum to show off 1,000 prints by Francisco Goya, which have remained in storage.
At an inauguration yesterday, Carmen Calvo, Spain's Culture Minister, said: "We have finished the biggest extension to the Prado in its more than 200 years of existence. It was a question of modernising the Prado in harmony with its past." The new extension will be open to the public from 28 April with an exhibition about 19th-century Spanish art.
Madrid's "big three" art museums are undergoing expansions to meet the demand to see the great masters. The Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Reina Sofia museums, which form the "Golden Triangle of Art" with the Prado, have recently completed extensions. All three are within a short walk along the Paseo del Prado boulevard.
Moneo, 70, from Tudela, in northern Spain, won the Pritzker Prize in 1997. He has also built the Atocha commuter rail station in Madrid and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles.
