
First look: inside the £85 million National Gallery revamp opening this weekend
Your eyes are immediately drawn to one of three digital HD screens – a large horizontal stretch at the back of the room, and a smaller two on pillars to your left – each showing a slow-moving pan of a painting housed in the floor above. Look closer, and you can see every crack of oil paint, every scratch, every immaculate stroke. Now this is a proper welcome to one of the world's greatest art museums.
Designed by US postmodernists Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, the Sainsbury Wing originally opened in 1991 as an addition to the main gallery building – but the foyer was dark and low-ceilinged, cluttered with false columns and dimmed by shaded windows.
Needless to say, not everyone was a fan. During the wing restoration last year, contractors discovered a regretful note from benefactor Lord Sainsbury inside one of the hollow columns, writing: '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.'
Old Sainsbury might have been glad to hear that after two years and a £85 million spend, the refurbished Sainsbury Wing is now fully completed. It opens to the public this weekend, along with the 'Wonder of Art': a major rehang of around 1000 works in the gallery's collection of European painting.
'We thought the welcome could be better,' said Gabriele Finaldi, Director of National Gallery, speaking about the wing refresh in a speech today. The museum utilised architect Annabel Selldorf, whose credits include the expansion of New York's Frick Collection, to lead the refurb in line with the gallery's bicentenary celebrations.
Lively and inviting, the result is a triumph. Reimagining the entrance as a 'place to rest and think, to meet your friends', the stairs were opened up, dark glazing swapped for clear glass and several columns removed, doubling the height of the foyer. On a quiet day, it's a lot of empty space – according to the Guardian, there is 60 percent more room than before – but that's surely the point; you can imagine it filling up fast with groups of school trips and tours.
The Sainsbury Wing now acts as the main entrance for the gallery – and with a new exterior sign, it's near impossible to miss (goodbye, days of running between queues with your phone out). Look left inside and you'll find a swish seating lounge next to Bar Giorgio, which is run in collab with Searcy's and serves great coffee (and £9.50 Mortadella rolls).
Head down to the basement for the refreshed teal-blue Pigott Theatre with a larger improved lobby (in time, there are plans to build an underground tunnel link to take you to the main building), or turn right to the brightly lit main staircase, leading up past a mezzanine housing a shop and the new Locatelli Italian restaurant – and up into the gallery hosting the very oldest works in the museum's collection. Names of major artists are subtly etched into stone on the side of the staircase walls – Bellini, Leonardo, Raphael – and in pride of place at the top, you'll see Richard Long's newly commissioned 'Mud Sun': an intricate, planet-like shape made with mud from the River Avon, acting as a bridge between the Medieval and Early Renaissance worlds of the gallery and the present day viewer.
Onto the collection itself. As you might expect, this is not a radical rehang – it's a subtle, clever, tasteful one, all white, light and clean, allowing the paintings to pop under the towering high ceilings. Throughout the rooms, which are loosely structured around chronological and geographical themes such as 15th century Netherlandish illusionism and early renaissance Florentine altarpieces, you'll spot all manner of world-famous works, like Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini portrait and Leonardo da Vinci's 'The Virgin of the Rocks'.
But you'll also encounter stuff that makes you stop in your tracks, such as an early 16th-century triptych unusually displayed with closed doors to show off its decorative exterior panels, or Segna di Bonaventura's 14th-century crucifix suspended high from the ceiling. Teeny tiny panels, vast golden triptychs, battle scenes, portraits, dozens and dozens of devotional works: this is a mind-boggling abundance of stunning, fascinating, invaluable paintings from Western art history.
There is a fair amount of criticism about the revamp – the building is, after all, Grade I-listed, and the original extension is still regarded as a postmodern icon – but there's no need to wax lyrical. A real, modern visitor will take space and light over a Trafalgar Square cellar any day. The new Sainsbury Wing is exactly what an art building should be – and most importantly of all, it is still completely free.
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'As a young listener …I was drawn in by the power and charisma of his stage performances, and the magic guitar playing on things like 'Erin-Go-Bragh' and 'The Snows'. But the deeper magic reveals itself in the more subdued songs, especially 'Craigie Hill' and 'Both Sides the Tweed'. 'Compiling a box-set of live and BBC material as we speak, I know now the other songs in his repertoire in 1980/81 that he might have recorded for Handful of Earth but I can see why he didn't - the mood of it would have changed. 'He got the contents of it exactly right. It's frustrating that much of Dick's 1972-88 commercially recorded work is currently inaccessible. Handful of Earth is the only album from that period that's been physically available ever since. But by happy chance, it's the best of them all!' Handful of Earth would later be described by Billy Bragg as one of his all-time favourite albums. 'World Turned Upside Down', he said, saw Gaughan grabbing the song "by the scruff of the neck and [chucking] it into the twentieth century where it lands at my feet and I think 'f———' hell, that is an incredible song. 'Both Sides Of The Tweed',' he added, 'is probably the best song you could ever imagine about English and Scottish thoughts of independence'. The comedian Stewart Lee accorded Handful of Earth a similar accolade, taking the view that it was 'a great album of Scottish nationalist songs and really old Highland ballads, with this fantastic intricate guitar playing'. It is all happening for Dick Gaughan now: the forthcoming boxset (there will be roughly 500 copies on sale to the general public), plus limited-edition releases of Live at the BBC (on vinyl), a CD, Live in Belfast 1979-82, and a twin CD collection, Live in the 70s. More is on the way. 'Next year', adds Colin, 'we hope to release an expanded True And Bold: Songs of the Scottish Miners [originally out in 1986, long out of print], a 2-CD Andy Kershaw Sessions Plus: 1984-2005 - Dick's six Andy Kershaw Radio 1 sessions plus the best of his other BBC recordings from the 'second phase' of his career - and Collaborations, an exciting album of the best of his studio recordings gifted to themed albums/tribute albums and vocal guest performances with other artists, all from 2000-2015. And from Topic, a new vinyl remaster is in the works.' Dick Gaughan deserves every last moment of his newly restored reputation, having paid his dues in more ways than one. Criss-crossing the country, driving long distances at uncongenial hours and playing in venues that frequently erred on the wrong side of glamorous, was not for everyone. But he persisted, because he was a musician, and because he was very good at it. 'By the time I knock off all the costs of doing my job,' he reflected to JP Bean for his book, Singing from the Floor: A History of British Folk Clubs, 'I probably end up keeping about 15 per cent of what I earn and my taxable income over a year is roughly what I'd earn stacking shelves in Tesco. 'Being on the road isn't a career - it's a way of life. Anyone who gets that the wrong way round isn't going to hack it for long. After a decade they're going to be completely burned out and bitterly disappointed unless they get lucky and hit commercial success outside the folk world … It's just the way of life I chose and it's the price you pay if you decide to do something outside the accepted mainstream.' * The GoFundMe page can be found at Dick Gaughan Live at the BBC 1972-79 (vinyl) is available for pre-ordering from Last Night From Glasgow: ; details of the forthcoming R/evolution boxset can be found at