“Such pushing and shoving... and the smell! Why ever would they allow these people in to the Academy?”: sociability and body language of Madrid’s museums visitors (19thcentury)

Abstract

n 1828 preparations were being made for the opening of the first public museum in Spain: the Royal Prado Museum. Along with the placement of the works of art and the control of their security, visitors were an essential part of the organisation of the establishment. Although the valued role of museums as democratisers of culture has been emphasised, more recent studies have observed that the first visitors to European museums were not from all social strata. This article aims to analyse the public museum as an arena of sociability and to investigate the involvement of social elites in both the control of access and the imposition of behavioural models within these "temples of the arts.” For this reason, this paper approaches the debate around the concept of citizenship. On the one hand, it explores the gradual opening of museums to all social classes and the social debates surrounding it. On the other hand, it analyses the use of the museum as a space of symbolic battle for the appropriation of these scenarios and the creation of exclusion dynamics to limit interactions between social classes. Therefore, the text analyses, among other sources of analysis, the body language of visitors. An object of study that has been understudied but which can offer us interesting answers.