The Prado multiplied: photography as shared memory analyses this discipline's instrumental role in circulating and publicising the museum’s collections and in shaping its visual memory since the nineteenth century.

Through forty-four carefully selected works, this exhibition illustrates the merits of a collection containing over 10,000 photographs of immense heritage value, a constantly growing corpus that reflects society’s interest in the study of this art form.

The show is part of the Open storage programme—focused on presenting the museum’s nineteenth-century collections in Room 60—which, since 2009, has organised small shows that illustrate different artistic perspectives and media with works not always on display due to spatial or conservation constraints.

Since 2009, Room 60 at the Prado has been a space reserved for the museum’s nineteenth-century collections, where smaller exhibitions are able to explore a variety of artistic perspectives and media. The latest, The Prado multiplied: photography as shared memory, is curated by Beatriz Sánchez Torija from the Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs and takes another step forward in recognising new artistic disciplines by making photography the centre of attention, reflecting the importance it has acquired in both museums and contemporary society.

Like engraving and lithography, photography can be used to obtain multiple copies of a single work, but it differs from printmaking in its unique ability to capture the real world with perfect accuracy. From the outset, this quality made it the preferred means of circulating the Prado's collections as well as a vital repository of memory, documenting the artworks, spaces and exhibition practices of each period.

Reproductions of works of art account for the bulk of the museum’s photography collection. The exhibition narrative, informed by the analysis of these images, focuses particularly on the material quality of the photographs themselves and the purposes they served in the mid-to-late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Albumen, carbon and gelatin silver prints and photomechanical reproductions on cartes de visite, stereoscopic cards, postcards and other standardised formats illustrate the technical and functional evolution of photography applied to art.

The show takes visitors on a visual tour through some of the museum's most iconic spaces, including the Central Gallery, and thematic halls like the Murillo Room and sculpture gallery. In addition to being valuable documents and pieces of history, these images recall aspects of the Prado that have since disappeared, such as the formerly cluttered display of artworks, the furniture, the heating systems or occasional glimpses of visitors and staff in galleries that were usually shown empty in the early days of photography.

The systematic photographing of works in the museum began in the 1860s. In many cases, the technical limitations of early photographic processes meant that the pieces had to be taken outside and photographed in the sunlight. Once they had the negatives, photographers produced prints in different standardised formats, the sale of which ensured that images of the Prado circulated widely among the general public as well as experts and collectors.

Juan Laurent, José Lacoste, Braun, Moreno, Anderson, Hanfstaengl and other lading studios and photographers played a fundamental role in bringing images of the museum and masterpieces like Velázquez’s Surrender of Breda to new audiences. Some of these photographs were taken even before the works entered the Prado or when they participated in national fine arts exhibitions, making them valuable records of their physical and exhibition history.

The widespread use of postcards in the early twentieth century became another means of publicising the collections. Collotype and other printing techniques popularised these images and allowed the Prado to reach a truly global audience, cementing photography’s role as a bridge between the museum and society.

The Prado multiplied: photography as shared memory is an invitation to reflect on photography not merely as a means of circulating images, but as heritage in its own right: a collection that documents the history of the museum, transforms the way people see its works and, over time, expands the Prado’s cultural reach.