This ambitious new series approaches the study of the collections in the Prado Museum from a gender perspective. It will explore the women who became artists, and the many women who promoted artists and collected works of art, as well as the women who inspired some of the masterpieces in this institution. It will offer new insights on a wide range of topics on art and women, and their interaction with politics, money and power.

One of the main goals of this unique series is to understand the complex and multi-layered interaction between women and the evolution of a major national museum. It will include new studies focused on female artists’ production and their presence or absence in museum rooms. But it will go beyond these established topics to examine the link between the formation of the collections of the Prado Museum and women patrons. It will also commission work on women who inspired and received works of art that were incorporated into the collections, not forgetting the contribution of women in technical and ancillary roles. The broad chronology will enable us to trace and reflect the changing role of women and their relationship with the arts, as well as the evolution of a major Western cultural institution and its dependence on women.

This innovative approach will allow us both to delve deeper and to extend the range of current studies, exploring new areas of research that include but go beyond who these women were and what they created or collected, offering new insights on the creation of female networks, and the exchange and promotion of art and artists.