14 September 2016
Madrid Headquarters
The curator of El Prado Museum, Miguel Zugaza, and the founder and director of GNOSS, Ricardo Alonso Maturana, presented the keys to success of the museum’s digital transformation during the opening ceremony of the fourth edition of the Deusto Business School entrepreneurship and leadership programmes.
Before a large audience of students and alumni from both programmes (including senators, mayors, former ministers, entrepreneurs…) Zugaza highlighted the success of having carried out the digital transformation of one of Europe’s oldest museums, which will celebrate its 200th birthday in 2019.
The curator of El Prado Museum recognized that it was Google Earth’s request to put photographs of 15 masterpieces on the web that brought them closer to the digital world. “Colleagues from other museums thought that we were crazy for having made our masterpieces available on the Internet," he explained. “But that was a key change and nowadays all museums have understood that making these pictures available to users is a very important step forward,” he added.
The new website, released just a few months ago to replace a previous trial carried out in 2007, is user-focused, giving a thorough view of the museum's works. Such is the degree of detail that users can view the brushstrokes and make personalised searches. The intention is to take the museum to the web, although, as Zugaza pointed out, the real experience is visiting it.
Ricardo Alonso, founder and director of Gnoss, the firm which carried out the digitalisation, explained that, unlike traditional websites, El Prado’s website was made through a knowledge graph search. This links the works of art and authors of the collection, thus enriching the content with other knowledge assets at the museum, such as the encyclopaedia or archives.
The presentation of El Prado's digitalisation at Deusto Business School Madrid was preceded by talks delivered by the president of RedEmprendia, Senén Barro, who highlighted the importance of collective leadership and by the director generals of ICADE Business School (José María Pérez Garrido) and Deusto Business School (Luc Theis).
The event was presided by Iñaki Ortega, director of DBS Madrid and academic director of the entrepreneurship and innovation programmes taught jointly by Deusto Business School and ICADE Business School.
