It's not museums that continued collecting art during Covid-19 but banks

As pandemic-related shutdowns have entered their ninth month, banks have continued to collect, lend, and exhibit art. By comparison, 1 in 3 American museums never reopened after shutting down in March

In many respects, Spain’s central bank was playing catch-up the minute it was founded in 1782—nearly 100 years after the Bank of England.

From another angle, though, Spain’s Banco de San Carlos, which subsequently became the Banco de España, was ahead of its time: It ranks as having one of the world’s first corporate art collections.

“The president of the Bank of Spain commissioned Francisco Goya to create six works of the bank’s directors,” says Banco de España curator Yolanda Romero. “One of the goals was to preserve the memory of the history of the bank through the portraits, and the other