Prado: Museum, Boulevard and Carnival. Afinogenova E.

Long before the expanding stripes of street movement turned Prado Boulevard into a kind of boring frame of the museum of the same name, the Spaniards and foreigners came to take a walk simply “on Prado”. Here was a kind of cultural border of the growing city, where the village carnivals and city entertainments coexisted, fought with each other and eventually merged, giving rise to modern “leisure”. Understanding that visitors rarely agreed with the ideas imposed on them about how to interpret the museum, this book suggests looking at its history as a dispute about culture, leisure and the society they form. Like people who crossed the threshold of the museum, not knowing what could not be seen and done inside the building and beyond, on Prado Boulevard and around it, the participants of this dispute - journalists, politicians, museum authorities and critics - considered the contemplation of art of the pastime , closely related to other forms of social behavior...