The National Gallery in London has triumphantly reopened its Sainsbury Wing after more than two years of extensive renovations, marking the culmination of the museum's bicentennial celebrations. The project, led by German-born architect Annabelle Selldorf, has transformed the gallery's presentation and visitor experience, creating what critics are calling a triumphant rehang that offers fresh perspectives on the museum's world-renowned collection.
The renovation project initially faced harsh criticism when plans were first unveiled, with opponents arguing that modifications to the postmodern Sainsbury Wing would constitute sacrilege against the internationally significant building designed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown just over thirty years ago. Denise Scott Brown herself was among the vocal critics, comparing Selldorf's plans to making the wing look "like a circus clown in a tutu" – a striking metaphor for what she saw as inappropriate changes to their architectural vision.
The National Gallery justified the extensive project by citing inadequate facilities for receiving six million annual visitors in an institution originally designed for very different circumstances. Cologne-born Selldorf, who has built her reputation through thoughtful museum interventions including the highly praised renovation of the Frick Collection in New York, emerged victorious from the competition to upgrade what was originally conceived as a side entrance into a proper reception hall befitting modern museum challenges. Her work has been so influential that Time magazine named her one of the hundred most influential figures of the year.
During the construction period, more than forty percent of the museum was temporarily closed, forcing visitors to endure long queues as only two of the three entrances remained operational. Early Renaissance paintings normally housed in the Sainsbury Wing were largely inaccessible to the public, with some key works cramped into limited wall space in the main building. These disruptions added to visitor frustration and fueled opposition to the architectural interventions.
The reopening has vindicated Selldorf's vision, with the renovated spaces now serving as a natural extension of public space into the museum's interior – perfectly aligned with the National Gallery's founding principle from 1824 of making art accessible to everyone. The entrance hall has been dramatically improved through the relocation of the large bookshop and cloakroom, while the forest of massive columns has been thinned out to create better flow. Integrated metal detectors reduce the need for bag searches, enabling smoother visitor circulation throughout the facility.
Selldorf's respectful yet effective transformation includes replacing tinted glass with clear panels, removing a corner of the mezzanine, and installing new ceiling lights to bring more natural light into the entrance area. She created a small forecourt between the neoclassical main building and the Sainsbury Wing by leveling a grassy area, better integrating the addition into the overall ensemble while guiding visitors toward the entrance. An eleven-meter-wide LED screen displaying detailed artwork images helps orient visitors before their steep climb into the galleries – an innovation inspired by high-resolution LED displays that attract passengers at the subway station where Selldorf would exit on her way to the National Gallery.
The galleries themselves have undergone a complete conceptual transformation. Where visitors once climbed toward Francesco Botticini's luminous Assumption of the Virgin, they now encounter Richard Long's more somber "Mud Sun" at the top of the stairs – a six-meter-wide gypsum-primed panel whose prehistoric creativity-suggesting markings bridge past and present. This artistic statement can be interpreted as a symbol of the painting process itself, reflecting the new arrangement's greater attention to the creative process behind the masterpieces.
The Sainsbury Wing's central room sequence is now conceived as a church nave, with Jacopo di Cione's massive polyptych depicting the Coronation of the Virgin at one end and the Pollaiuolo brothers' Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian closing the enfilade at the other. This arrangement allows visitors to trace the development of Tuscan altarpiece painting over a century. Side rooms house works created for private patrons, including a hall dedicated to Venetian painting that features Albrecht Dürer's small panel of Saint Jerome, exemplifying the many revealing cross-connections in the new arrangement that illustrate the influence between Northern European and Italian painting traditions.
The renovation includes thematic accents within the chronological presentation, sometimes spotlighting individual artists like Rembrandt, Gainsborough, or Monet, other times focusing on genres like still life or landscape pastel painting, or illuminating phenomena like the Grand Tour. A dedicated room explores the different uses of gold as an expression of the precious and divine, bringing together such diverse artists as Masaccio, Botticelli, Hans Memling, Antonello da Messina, Michael Pacher, and Bartolomé Bermejo. The display also illustrates the purposes and environments for which these paintings were originally created.
Peter Schade, the tireless head of the frame workshop, has created new settings for numerous works, including what experts describe as the most authentic reproduction of a Gothic polyptych frame for the Jacopo di Cione attribution. The fresh presentation benefits from a striking number of new acquisitions, restored and differently framed paintings, and more than 120 loans that enhance the overall impact of the collection.
Among the greatest highlights is the magnificent room in the main building dedicated to Titian's paintings. Through the doorway, a suggestive sight line falls on Bronzino's Allegory with Venus and Cupid, which appears several rooms later in the visitor route. Unlike the Tate galleries, the National Gallery has rejuvenated itself without lowering its didactic standards or bowing to contemporary trends, maintaining its commitment to telling the story of Western painting through outstanding masterpieces.
The transformation recalls poet Louis MacNeice's celebration in 1945 when the National Gallery's collection returned from Welsh slate mines where it had been sheltered during World War II air raids. MacNeice wrote of the "kings" returning from their caves, "refreshed by darkness, armed with color, mastery and ambiguities, armed with Uccello's lances, beer mugs, dragon tongues, peacock eyes, sparkling jewelry, flounces and frills." Today's visitors can experience a similar joy of rediscovery as the Old Masters "turn their cadences, whisper and roar, hundreds of windows opening again onto a living but unchanging world."
