Review of London’s Refurbished National Gallery Sainsbury Wing

Step foot in the National Gallery’s new-look Sainsbury Wing and you’ll be greeted with a genuine sense of anticipation. A sanctuary from the pigeons, buskers and walking tours crowding Trafalgar Square, neutral limestone shades and vast expanses of glass encompass a wide, open foyer.

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. 

The National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing reopens on Saturday, May 10. 

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