ANNABELLE SELLDORF’S appointment to make alterations to the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery was announced on 21 July 2021. Born of controversy, the building continues to arouse passion. And why not? Tis site is about as central to the nation’s wellbeing as any. New Year’s Eve, sporting success, parades, parties: they all come here. In announcing the need to upgrade the building the present director, Gabriele Finaldi, acknowledged the ‘practically perfect picture galleries’ in the Sainsbury Wing but spoke of needing to respond to ‘a huge increase in visitor numbers and the changing needs and expectations of those visitors over the last 30 years’. But. Te basement has never been ‘perfect’ for major temporary exhibitions. As for the monumental staircase that culminates at a lift door – is it really the mature fruition of postmodernism that combined classical tradition, contemporary wit and the modern


demands of great national institution worthy of Grade I listing for a contemporary building? Over the last three years we have been witness to an extraordinary public row. Yet another public row about a building that has caused anger and deep hurt, joy but little elation, for half a century. How did we get here, why has this happened, and what is really happening now?


Cat-fight in Trafalgar Square She’s good, but is she that good? Who knows? Who’s to say? Did Malcolm Reading know what he was doing when he led the search for an architect on behalf of the National Gallery? Honed at the British Council for decades, has he lost his touch? Referred to as a ‘sensitive intervention’ and ‘pivotal in reshaping the gallery for its third century and the next generation of visitors’, Selldorf’s ideas were not well received. Neither was the second revised proposal.


Received wisdom apparently said something must be done. But what? Stephen Bayley was not exactly breaking new ground in 2011 when he said that the Sainsbury Wing was ‘a pitiably ill-proportioned and an architecturally illiterate dollop of pious schmaltz’. Jonathan Glancey labled it ‘a postmodern classical trifle’. It’s easy to criticise, but – is the redesign really ‘a more welcoming and inclusive experience for visitors’ with its so-called ‘square within a square’? Our Malcolm’s brief said that ‘the National Gallery now needs to develop an inspirational, world-class welcome attuned to visitors’ expectations, which also resolves practical problems, some of which have been further highlighted by the pandemic’. He also asserted that ‘originally, the building was intended to provide extra gallery space, while being only an overflow entrance to the gallery, a junior partner to the historic Portico Entrance in the Wilkins


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