NATIONAL GALLERY: THE SAINSBURY WING AND A NEW CHAPTER

The National Gallery, now 200 years old, occupies one of the most famous buildings in London, on the north side of Trafalgar Square.  This Greek Revival masterpiece by William Wilkins was designed to take account of the view of St Martin in the Fields from Pall Mall—so unusually it was conceived as having been seen from the side.  Clive and John discuss both Wilkins’s design and the Sainsbury Wing, added by Venturi, Scott Brown in the 1980s.  This extension followed the controversy of the Prince of Wales’s speech at the RIBA at Hampton Court Palace in 1984, in which he likened the previous proposal to ‘a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend’.

With hugely more people visiting the gallery each year and the additional security needed in response to the Just Stop Oil attacks, the Sainsbury Wing has become the Gallery’s main entrance. As a result, the Venturi design has been revisited, subtly revised and delicately enhanced by the German-American architect Annabelle Selldorf.  At the same time, the gallery has been completely rehung under the director Gabriele Finaldi.  What do John and Clive think of the result?