Cherchez les Femmes

In 2022 Madrid’s Museo Nacional del Prado introduced a new initiative to guide visitors through its vast galleries: “The Female Perspective” (El Prado en femenino), which highlights all the ways in which women have shaped its holdings as collectors and sponsors of art (promotoras artísticas). Curiously, in English we call these promotoras “patronesses” of the arts rather than “matrons,” as if such activities were a fatherly action more naturally suited to men. The Prado’s collection, however, tells quite another story. A short film narrated by Noelia García Pérez, a professor of art history at the University of Murcia and the director of “The Female Perspective,” shows what the museum’s galleries would look like if the works acquired by women were removed: a series of yawning gaps and blank walls (albeit walls recently painted in the strong, striking colors that the Prado’s director, Miguel Falomir Faus, has introduced to complement both the artworks and the lofty spaces). Tellingly, the camera moves to the clack of high heels to show that the film “sees” its subject explicitly through women’s eyes.Through a series of find-it-yourself maps, “The Female Perspective” has connected pr...