La Jornada: The Prado Museum lands in Mexico to meet its digital community

Madrid. The Prado Museum is perhaps the most revolutionary and transgressive art gallery in the world on its social networks. Velázquez, Goya, El Greco o Hieronymus Bosch They spread in the infinite universe of the digital network through casual content, far from solemnity, with a close and direct language, an avant-garde and youthful camera game, with the sole desire to bring the great artistic and cultural legacy to the greatest number of people possible.

They have done this thanks to their team on social networks, led by Javier Sainz de los Terreros, and one of the people who regularly use their content, the art historian Paloma Málaga, who also decided to break the digital barrier and go to Mexico to have face-to-face contact with the cybernetic community of our country.

The choice is not trivial, since Mexico is, after Spain, the country with the largest number of Internet users who follow the Prado Museum on a daily basis, with a figure of 750 thousand Internet users who are regulars in explaining about The black paints, of Goya, or about the secrets of The meninas.

Months ago, the venue’s social media team achieved a milestone: being awarded at the prestigious Webby Awards, an international reference in terms of digital community, which are presented every year in New York.

The award-winning proposal, titled The Prado Museum: Bringing Humanity to the Digital Cultural Space, distinguished a strategy based on the quality of the content, the conversation with the community and a daily and coherent presence on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and X, from which the museum shares art and knowledge with the global audience.

The main person responsible for this success is Sainz de los Terreros, who explained to The Day some of the keys to why they have become a reference in the fluid and massive dialogue with Internet users, something that no similar museum in the rest of the world has achieved.

The choice of Mexico as the first destination to make contact is due to the enormous response of the digital community in that country with its content. “We have a very loyal community that connects every day from different parts of the world, which is why we believe it is very important to remove the museum from the physical walls. And, of course, after the people of Spain, the second largest community is Mexico, where we have 750 thousand people who follow us more or less constantly, but always on a regular basis, even many of them every day.”

The contents of the Prado Museum are varied and constant and always related to the platform on which they broadcast. For example, an explanatory video of 15 minutes or more usually has a larger audience on Facebook or Instagram, while more fleeting “pills,” lasting less than a couple of minutes, in which a few glimpses of a painting or an exhibition are given, usually have a more similar audience on TikTok.

“We want to know their stories”

One of the most admired and recognizable faces of these contents is Paloma Málaga, art historian and head of the Education area of ​​the art gallery, in addition to having a close relationship with the Friends of the Prado Museum, made up of people who help the institution with funds for projects of interest, whether it be the restoration of a painting or even informative trips about what happens inside the museum.

Paloma Málaga related: “we are going to Mexico to return so much warmth and interest in what we do, to connect with them, but from Mexico City, explain what we do, review parts of our daily life, and especially in Mexico, where we have a lot of images from followers who have sent us very nice stories about their relationship with the Prado through the digital platform.”

Sainz de los Terreros added that during their trip to Mexico they also want to “talk about the museum’s relationship with Mexico, because there have been exhibitions, but scholarships have also passed through it; above all, we want to listen to our digital community to better understand their stories.”

Some of the videos or content they upload to social networks usually have more than a million views, a milestone for a cultural institution.

A good part of these impacts come from Mexican Internet users, which is why the network team gives maximum importance to the meeting they will hold today at the San Ildefonso School in Mexico City.