Latvian Museum Association YEAR AWARD 2018:
Exhibition of the year

The exhibition “PRADO 12 characters” organized in collaboration between Art Museum RIGA BOURSE and The Boris and Inara Teterev Foundation has received the Latvian Museum Association Year Award as the best exhibition of 2017. The exhibition offered viewers their first chance to see the artworks from the Spanish Museum PRADO and attracted 75 000 art enthusiasts throughout the summer.

The exhibition “PRADO 12 characters” displayed the portraits of women by Paolo Veronese (1528–1588), Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641), Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–1682), Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) and other notable classic painters of Western Europe that have sparked joy for millions of viewers in the largest Spanish museum PRADO for centuries.

The exhibition “PRADO 12 characters” allows a focused glance at the history and specifics of the museum collection that is unsurprisingly dominated by expressive colors and forms of the Spanish art that, in a geographical context, is quite evidently enriched by the presence of related cultural spaces – Flemish, French, and Italian art. The exhibition exposed the various interpretations of the figure of the woman in art, demonstrating the social status of the depicted personalities and the woman as a symbol for power, elegance, beauty, maternity, piety, or frivolity. Simultaneously the exhibition also told the story of 12 world-renown master painters, whose paintings have fascinated millions of viewers for centuries.

PRADO National Museum collection exhibition in Riga was a special gift to the 100th anniversary of the founding of Latvia by the patrons Boris and Ināra Teterev, and the idea of Boriss Teterevs.

The Art Museum RIGA BOURSE expresses gratitude for the received recognition, and a special thanks for responsiveness and fruitful collaboration to the PRADO museum, to Ināra and Boriss Teterev, to the patroness of the exhibition – Ex-President of the Republic of Latvia and the President of Club of Madrid, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, as well as to the team involved in the realization of the exhibition!