If buildings could speak, would they always object to their demolition? In the case of the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing, now undergoing a controversial redevelopment, a voice from the grave heartily approves of the arrival of the wrecking ball.
It has emerged that, during the demolition of a pair of columns in the gallery’s foyer last year, a letter from the major donor Lord Sainsbury was discovered in a plastic folder, hidden inside one of the columns. The note outlines his fierce objection to the existence of these false pillars, which served no structural purpose, and expresses his delight at their removal.
“If you have found this note,” says Sainsbury in his letter, dated 26 July 1990, and typed entirely in capital letters on his supermarket’s headed paper, “you must be engaged in demolishing one of the false columns that have been placed in the foyer of the Sainsbury wing of the National Gallery.
“I believe that the false columns are a mistake of the architect,” he continues, “and that we would live to regret our accepting this detail of his design. Let it be known that one of the donors of this building is absolutely delighted that your generation has decided to dispense with the unnecessary columns.”
Sainsbury died in 2022, but his sense of joy in this posthumous vindication is palpable. His widow, Anya, was present when the note was removed, and placed in the galley’s archive for posterity. “I was so happy for John’s letter to be rediscovered after all these years,” she told the Art Newspaper, “and I feel he would be relieved and delighted for the gallery’s new plans and the extra space they are creating.”
At the time, Sainsbury wasn’t the only one to raise his eyebrows at the playful postmodern design, produced by the Philadelphia practice of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. Opened in 1991, the project was met with a lukewarm critical reception from British critics. Verdicts ranged from “a vulgar American piece of postmodern mannerist pastiche” to “picturesque mediocre slime”. It was too traditional for modernists, too experimental for traditionalists. And just too glib for the po-faced English art world.
The intellectual east coast architects had done their best to navigate a political-aesthetic minefield. The site had originally been slated for a glassy modernist extension by the British hi-tech firm Ahrends, Burton and Koralek after it won a competition for the work in 1982. That design was swiftly scrapped after being denounced in a career-ending speech by the then Prince of Wales, who called it “a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved and elegant friend”. Keen to appease establishment tastes, the museum hired Venturi Scott Brown to produce something more contextually sensitive. The result was a project that has since earned plaudits as one of the most sophisticated pieces of postmodern architecture in the country.
The building deftly fuses the classicism of the existing gallery with modern motifs in steel and dark tinted glass – celebrating what Venturi called, in the title of his famous book, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. Games are played with the Corinthian pilasters of William Wilkins’ 1830s building, repeating them across the extension’s facade in staccato rhythms, then slicing great chunks out of the walls to reveal sheets of tinted glazing, reminiscent of a 1990s shopping mall, perhaps in a nod to the museum shop inside.
The false columns in the foyer were part of the intended spatial sequence, conceived as a procession from shadow to light, inspired by the entry to an ancient church. Visitors would enter this crypt-like lower level, proceed up a grand staircase, and arrive in the airy galleries above.
Neil MacGregor, director of the National Gallery when the Sainsbury Wing was commissioned and built, told the Art Newspaper this week: “Venturi wanted the foyer to have the feel of a mighty crypt, leading upstairs to the galleries, so it was a subsidiary space – the beginning of a journey, not a destination. John Sainsbury argued that sightlines should be as unencumbered as possible, thinking the extra columns would conceal the entrance to the lecture theatre and temporary exhibition galleries, confusing the visitor.”
More than 30 years later, Sainsbury’s view is shared by the National Gallery’s current administration. Director Gabriele Finaldi has said it is the “heavy grey architecture” and “forest” of thick pillars on the ground floor that he and his architect, Annabelle Selldorf, want to change. New York-based Selldorf – widely respected for her accomplished museum projects elsewhere – says her makeover will create a “more casual seating area, where visitors can spend time and watch people come by, a free space where everyone is welcome”. But her images don’t inspire a huge amount of confidence. Her lobby may be less encumbered by columns, but it is also a more generic world: a smooth, bright, beige place, redolent of airport lounges and hotel foyers the world over. You might say that the result looks like an aggressive act of teeth-whitening in the mouth of a much-loved and elegant friend.
Still, at least the man who originally paid for it all is finally happy. We can eagerly await the discovery of further posthumous missives, perhaps expressing his distaste for the oversized cornice mouldings, or his displeasure at the brash tinted windows.