082 NPG
and the Courtauld Institute, to Tate, the British Museum, V&A, the Imperial War Museum, Teatre Royal Haymarket and even Oxford University.
Te new Lightroom space in London that was launched with David Hockney’s (Bigger and Closer, not smaller and further away) was backed by a group of investors led by Blavatnik. And, in the US, his support ranges from Carnegie Hall and the New York Academy of Sciences, to Harvard and Yale, from Obama and Biden to a fistful of Republican candidates. He has a lot of money and is not afraid to spend it. Trough his family foundation, the charitable contributions to leading academic and research institutions, and to world-class art and cultural institutions, Blavatnik donations amount to over £1bn. Te generosity is overwhelming and just keeps coming.
Whatever your political viewpoint and wherever your interests lie, as inflation plunges the arts world into fresh and ever deeper crises, it is clear that in the UK the arts can only be saved if we stop sneering at big business. Large philanthropic organisations are generally known for their safe choices. Respectable, perhaps staid, efforts in various cities around the country, but delve deeper and you can see that Blavatnik brings artistic flair to philanthropy. He could have played it safe, and did, and does. Safe choices, respectable organisations, incredibly generous, but look closely and his foundation does a great deal more. And at the Portrait Gallery, when the Sacklers bowed out, Blavatnik came in.
Also, he bought that former Victorian public lavatory for the gallery for around £3m. Underground, this strange edifice has space six times larger than the ticket kiosk that was on the site of the entrance to the toilets. It is hoped that, subject to planning permission from Westminster Council, it could be completely refurbished, providing a venue for changing gallery displays, or performance and
film relating to portraiture.
Te area around the new north entrance will soon be very different, creating an enhanced public space halfway between Trafalgar Square and Leicester Square. It is to be named Ross Place, acknowledging David Ross, the co-founder of Carphone Warehouse who paid for it, and is now chairman of the Portrait Gallery.
Rehanging over 1,000 works in 34 rooms has been a massive undertaking, a complete re-display and reinterpretation of the gallery’s collection across 40 refurbished galleries, presenting a greater and more diverse selection of portraits than ever seen before. Te hope is that by maintaining a chronological approach, this comprehensive top-to-bottom re-hang will display works that are relevant to a wider range of audiences and present missing or hidden stories from our history. Set amongst the gallery’s best-loved paintings will also be many more works from its collection of 250,000 photographs, ranging from 1840 to the present day. As is always the case with building galleries and museums today, the mechanical and electrical design is critical – it has to focus on maintaining appropriate environmental conditions for the preservation of art and minimising the use of energy in ways that are sensitive to the original features of a historic building, with energy saving measures adopted wherever possible, such as including heat recovery on ventilation systems. Here, the lighting design will give more presence to the entrances, introduce daylight into the galleries, and address the recurring problem of visitor fatigue that will, in theory, create a flexible, characterful, energy efficient and healthy gallery. Bringing daylight to the galleries will be controlled by low- transmission blinds to protect the art from exposure to sunlight. Lighting in the learning centre will be occupant-controlled to prevent glare, with the inclusion of low-energy lighting. Te provision of acoustically absorbent finishes to some gallery spaces should improve the experience for busy events and functions, with the new entrance and multi-storey atrium having been modelled in 3D acoustic ray-tracing software that included assessment of noise from the nearby Charing Cross Road and vibration from underground trains. Max Fordham has been responsible for the M&E having previously worked with Fobert on Tate St Ives.
Fordham provides a link to Nissen Richards. Both worked with Witherford Watson Mann on the redevelopment and transformation of the Courtauld at Somerset House. At the NPG, Pippa Nissen and her team have been responsible for both the interior and exhibition design in one integrated package. A variety of colour schemes have been employed on each floor and in each wing of the building, with a sequence of related colours tonally shifting through chronological periods and through each suite of rooms to reinforce the visitor’s sense of place in what is now
a very large and complex gallery that has been built up across four eras of architectural intervention. People need to know where they are as well as where they are going. Information panels, digital screens and picture captions have all been incorporated to help visitors; plinths, vitrines and tables have been specially designed, together with wall cases and screens in a conscious echo of Carlo Scarpa’s celebrated work at Castelvecchio in Verona. Te current director of the NPG is Nicholas Cullinan who, in 2015 at the age of 38, became the second-youngest director in the Portrait
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