Our history

El Museo Nacional de Arte Industriales

The National Museum of Industrial Arts

Let's travel back 100 years to discover what the Museum was like at the beginning of the 20th century. In this first stage, the so-called National Museum of Industrial Arts was located in the heart of Madrid de los Austrias, in a space on Calle Sacramento. In the early 1930s, due to a lack of space, it moved to the 19th-century mansion where we can still be found today. Who worked here? Who visited the Museum? Let’s look back to see whether we have changed a lot or whether we’re still the same as we were.

In the merciless competition between European countries to conquer consumer markets, Spain carved out a niche for itself with artistic and hand-crafted products of high and medium quality. Developing this market became the goal of a group of intellectual activists who also aimed to establish solid technical training. They reformed the teaching methods used at technical schools and colleges, organised exhibitions, published magazines and set up the museum in 1912.

Education to promote the industrial arts

'Neither theory without practice, nor practice without theory'. The Museum was, first and foremost, a place to learn. Its collections, library and workshops were dedicated to promoting the artistic and technical culture of the industrial arts. The theoretical and the hands-on, the beautiful and the useful, combined to educate the human spirit and to modernise craft and industrial production. As a result, the living conditions of citizens were expected to improve and the wealth of the country to increase. This educational mission had its origins in the South-Kensington Museum (London), now the Victoria & Albert Museum. The museum was one piece of a vast, glittering pedagogical programme that sought national reform through education. It was conceived and promoted by the Institución Libre de Enseñanza (Free Institution of Education) and other public and private organisations committed to progress.

Work at the Museum

The Museum’s staff consisted of a director, Rafael Domènech, a curator, Luis Pérez Bueno, a restorer, a librarian and auxiliary staff. They brought together representative collections of Hispanic and European artistic and industrial techniques, and classified, studied and disseminated them. They organised an innovative department dedicated to the 'pedagogy of the industrial arts', which offered workshops, courses and lectures. They also organised what were called 'technical series': sequences of procedures for making translucent enamels, embroidery, batik, tarso (polychrome decoration of wood) and carving. They also put together mobile exhibitions, called 'travelling' exhibitions. Famous specialists helped with these activities. Francisco Pérez-Dolz, professor at the School of Arts and Crafts, painter and specialist in weaving, helped teach the batik technique. Gregorio Muñoz Dueñas, director of the Manises and La Moncloa ceramic schools, made drawings for the decorative series.

El Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas

A vueltas con el cambio de nombre... y de sede

Entre finales de los años veinte y principios de los años treinta del siglo pasado, el Museo atraviesa una etapa de transición hacia su reformulación como Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas. ¡Sin embargo, saber cuando se hace efectivo este cambio de nombre no es una tarea fácil!

El 15 de julio de 1927 ya hay una solicitud dirigida al Director General de Bellas Artes, aunque no hay constancia de ninguna resolución oficial. En este artículo , publicado en el número 6 (2020) de la revista online de artes decorativas y diseño Además de, Alicia Herrero Delavenay e Isabel María Rodríguez Marco señalan que, en diciembre de 1929, a raíz de la muerte de Rafael Doménech, hay un documento oficial del Ministerio en el que se habla del Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas (MNAD). No obstante, también hay otros documentos oficiales con fechas similares en los que se mantiene el nombre anterior.

¡Lo que sí que podemos afirmar es que será a partir de 1931 cuando, una vez que se inicia el proceso de cambio de sede, se consolida este nuevo nombre! El entonces director, Luis Pérez Bueno, fue quien solicitó al Ministerio de Instrucción Pública su mudanza al edificio de la Escuela Superior de Magisterio, ubicado en la Calle Montalbán nº 12, su sede actual, siendo aprobada en 1933 y concluida por entero en 1935.