They are art workers. Those who usually work in the shadow of their stars: the great masterpieces. Restaurars, researchers and conservatives, some of the most recognized in the world. But for years are also the influencers of the Prado Museum. They have been starring live videos on the Instagram account of the Pinacoteca, a very successful communication strategy that has dragged millions of users. A few weeks ago they completed the 1,000 directs and to celebrate it, they have gathered this Thursday in the museum auditorium with a group of about 400 followers.
“It is a pleasure and a joy finally see you here, put the users face. Because we always see each other in another way,” Javier Sainz, head of social networks of the Prado, began greeting. He devised the initiative – which now carries with Bernardo Pajares – which began in 2017 as a “small experiment” and whose videos now accumulate almost 90 million views in total and more than 6 million I like. Only last year they reached 27 million visualizations, more than in any other year.
These are small daily videos of 10 minutes, just before opening the doors of the place, in which experts explain some of their most relevant works, focusing mainly on small details. They also tell their work, receive the camera in the restoration workshops and answer people’s questions. The initiative hit a great leap, then intensified by the pandemic and the closure of the Pinacoteca, in the museum’s bicentennial celebration, in November 2019. Then, the direct one starred by the director of the insition, Miguel Falomir. To remember that moment, the two ideators of the initiative – so good ceremony teachers as social media strategists – project a video with the reaction of a follower. “He is the fucking director of the museum explaining the paintings,” says a young man in the image, incredulous. And then Falomir spoke. “Welcome, I am the fucking director of the museum,” he began, starting the laughter of the attendees and then highlighting the initiative of the Pinacoteca that directs: “The most important thing in the meadow is not your building or your work, it is your audience. You return the works to life. Today we celebrate one of the most successful strategies that this museum has developed, and I think that any museum, to achieve this connection. It had happened to anyone. ”
Then they paraded on the stage of the auditorium, two by two, the true protagonists to explain their feelings participating in the videos and answering the public’s questions. They have become a phenomenon in networks, so much that some, as the painting restaurateur María Antonia López, stops them by the bars: “They tell me: ‘You are the Instagram’. My husband and my daughter are ahead of them,” he says between laughs. Some guest experts, artists or writers willing to venture and explain in ten minutes some of their favorite works have also passed through the famous videos. The last one, in the video a thousand, King Felipe VI that explained the great jewel of the museum, Las Meninasfrom Velázquez.
But of all, if someone captures the attention of the public, and thus has been evident in the event, they are the two most regular characters in the directs: Paloma Málaga and Alejandro Vergara, restorative of painting and art historian, respectively. So much that, which rock stars, the public stood up, mobiles in the hands, to receive them, the last to move on the stage. “It’s like that. You go to Ikea and stop you, or you go through the museum and they tell you: ‘I can’t believe it.’ I love it. It is the love of people. It is an inspiration to continue doing it,” said Malaga.
Its popularity is also palpated among the public gathered today. “I am very fan,” says Raquel Marín, 29, regular the videos that “bring you closer in a very real way even if you are not here.” It is the example of the age group age of the museum on Instagram: young people between 25 and 35 years. But the audience of the network, which already accumulates more than 1.3 million followers, is very varied. Maite Solé and Consuelo Jiménez, 83 and 79, enjoy as nobody with the best moments of the videos that are screened on the auditorium screen.
They laugh, comment when their favorite protagonists come out and illuminate their eyes when the king appears in front of Las Meninas. “I am a Forofa,” says Solé. “The explanation of the paintings, the way they do … is a wonderful follow -up, they update you.” Miriam Chávez, 41 -year -old museum guide, sees them in the morning and then telling what he learns to his groups. Leyre Olaechea, also 41, particularly enjoys “how it expresses and how the Paloma (Málaga) painting lives”, and Encarna Santos, 54, prefers when “an external character comes to comment on very specific things”.
“What motivates us is to convey what we live and feel. The feeling of having a painting closely and seeing how it improves gradually with the restoration. The museum is also dissemination,” said Restorer María Álvarez. For this informative work, the Prado has received international awards such as Webby Awards, the known awards in the United States such as the Internet Oscar. And at the end of the event are the protagonists of that success, not the paintings with which they work, those who accumulate long lines for a selfie.