Thomas Struth’s Museum Photographs series examines the complex relationship between art, its audience, and the museum as an institution. His works serve both as an homage to the enduring power of masterpieces and as a critical reflection on their contemporary reception. Struth merges photography, art history, and appropriation, transforming the museum space into an independent artistic investigation.

In Museo del Prado (2005), Struth captures visitors standing before Velázquez’s Las Meninas, one of the most analyzed paintings in Western art. The image is both a study of spectatorship and a conceptual dialogue on the act of viewing itself. Resonating with the methodical precision of Bernd and Hilla Becher and the staged accuracy of Gregory Crewdson and Candida Höfer, the photograph reframes the museum experience as a moment of contemplation, questioning how audiences navigate the tension between historical significance and personal encounter.

“The idea behind the museum photographs was to retrieve masterpieces from the fate of fame, to recover them from their status as iconic paintings, to remind us that these were works which were created in a contemporary moment, by artists who had everyday lives. In essence, I wanted to bring together the time of the picture and the time of the viewer.” – Thomas Struth