Visit by a director of the newly refurbished National Portrait Gallery in London

They are the masks of life and death, ”explains Nicholas Cullinan, director of the National Portrait Gallery (NPG), pointing to the frozen features of John Keats and William Blake but also the likenesses of Shami Chakrabarti and Tracey Emin, fortunately always with us. . And in addition, soon to be installed in a central showcase, the infamous “Blood head” by Marc Quinn.

The director of the NPG shows The arts journal one of the new attractions he introduced during the gallery’s long closure. Cullinan thinks these portraits of morbid intimacy will fascinate visitors, but his innovation is also a creative use of the space available at his West End estate.

The building has been off limits for three years during a £41.3million redevelopment and refurbishment. The masks are on display in the Rotunda, a small room overlooking St Martin’s in the Fields. “It’s a great space but it’s quite difficult for paintings, you only have one viable wall,” Cullinan points out. This selective yet imaginative display could almost be his vision in miniature. “I think people will find it intriguing and quirky. We didn’t want to lose that about the portrait gallery because people, myself included, know it, like it, and think it’s a little different place from the others.

Cullinan, who is 46, fell in love with the NPG when he worked there in 2003 as a “visitor service assistant” while studying at the Courtauld Institute of Art. “One of the things I wanted to do was to make the museum as beautiful as possible. I loved the gallery, but it wasn’t always an aesthetically memorable experience. And in fact, it is a beautiful building and a beautiful collection. I want to do a lot more than beauty, but I really want to do this.

Cullinan’s vision of a beautiful NPG was not to erect a flamboyant new wing, but to remove much clutter to rediscover the splendor of the original 1893 design by its first director, Sir George Scharf.

Characteristic palace floors have been exposed and preserved. The logo that Scharf created in a sketch in 1893, a pattern found in the paving of the old lobby, is once again the official mark of the NPG, printed on umbrellas and cups in the new shop of Gift Shops on Charing Cross Road.

“There were a lot of windows that were boarded up or behind shutters, the skylights were covered in lead, so the whole building was pretty dark and closed off from the outside,” Cullinan says. He quotes a remark from the architect who led the project, Jamie Fobert. “Jamie said it was a public institution more like a private gentlemen’s club. It’s about keeping everyone at a distance rather than welcoming them. Now we have plenty of light and you can orient yourself.

Fobert has created a grand new entrance now, looking north and facing Leicester Square. People walked past the old doors without noticing them, according to Cullinan, but the new entrance gives the gallery “a public presence”, with its own courtyard, echoing the very well-established location of its neighbor, the National Gallery, in Trafalgar Square. When it officially reopens next Tuesday, the Princess of Wales will meet Fobert and Tracey Emin, who have been commissioned to create artwork for the gallery’s new doors, incorporating 45 carved brass panels, depicting “every woman, at through time”.

The NPG has also spent £2.7m to reclaim a former ticket office that stands in front: it’s a place to sell coffee and flowers, Cullinan suggests, but also provides access to substantial underground space.

Once inside the main building, visitors are greeted by a “more humane and harmonious space”, with the once overly dominating escalator now discreetly closed, and a new double-height wooden ticket window. While the temporary exhibition space is still located on the ground floor, the opening show will be a blockbuster photography exhibition by Paul McCartney titled The eyes of the storm—there are now also prominent collection exhibitions, so the gallery’s free permanent holdings can be enjoyed as soon as one enters, instead of paying for exhibitions first (described by Cullinan as an undesirable sense of paywall).

His “laundry list” for improving the NPG included providing step-free access and ensuring elevators reached every floor. There is a new learning center, with three studios, in the basement, next to “the moat”, a skylight that doubles as a small interior garden. A new staircase designed by Fobert – with a fine contemporary interpretation of Victorian ironwork – connects the center to the rest of the gallery and has not one but two ramps: one for adults and another, at a lower height, for children. children.

In the upstairs galleries, Cullinan says he and Fobert once again followed Scharf’s founding vision; in this case, evoking the interior of a Florentine palace (the historic NPG building was modeled after a Michelozzo-style palace). They added a bold color palette meant to refresh visitors’ eyeballs: galleries painted a rich blue open to spaces finished in a bright strawberry sorbet.

The NPG received a complete overhaul which introduced a more diverse range of portraits. There’s a new study of Dame Doreen Lawrence by Thomas Ganter, the photographic self-portrait of Khadija Saye (Saye died tragically in the Grenfell fire) and author Zadie Smith posed for Nigerian-American artist Toyin Ojih Odutola.

As part of a three-year collaboration with Chanel, a large mural depicting 130 women from across British history, titled Work in progress, was commissioned from Jann Hawarth and Liberty Blake. Cullinan says, “When we closed in 2020, 35% of the portraits on display in our post-1900 galleries were women. Today it’s 48%, a huge leap in three years. But Cullinan says he was not swayed by the recent rehang at Tate Britain, which was criticized by the Guardian as “empty, dignified and boring”. “I saw it, but we didn’t compare notes or anything. In a way, you could say they are doing something similar to what the NPG has always done, which is to have more historical context. We weren’t really looking over our shoulder.

The collection will be interspersed with thoughtful loans, and the hanging is always conducted chronologically, starting with the much-loved Tudor Gallery, with the portraits hung on new fabric-covered walls (adorning every wall on the second floor), and with the promise of accompaniment labels more lively.

How does the NPG now decide who to commemorate with a portrait? Does the final say belong to the conservation team or to the board of directors? Cullinan responds, “As far as acquisitions go, it tends to be led by curators, like any museum. We have proposed potential acquisitions for the approval of the Trustees. But if there’s one thing we do that’s very different from any other museum, it’s that we commission. We have proposed a list of people who are not in the collection. The administrators make the final decision on new models, and the curators then choose the artists to do their portraits.

The most interesting new acquisition is Sir Joshua Reynolds Portrait of Mai (Omai) (1776), which the NPG bought in April for £25 million. They share the work with the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, which contributed a similar sum. The co-owners take turns to exhibit the painting. This unusual timeshare program was brokered by Cullinan, who called May largest acquisition ever by NPG. “It was never in a museum collection; it has always been in private hands – it has been in a vault for 20 years. And I think when we reopen and everyone can see it, it will make a big difference for people. The portrait is surprisingly fresh, with the impasto still intact.

Like Cullinan’s collection of life and death masks, the acquisition of May is a statement of intent from the new NPG. “Having this image of a non-white individual in Georgian Britain being given dignity is very powerful. That’s all we tried to do, just to show the best quality portraits. It’s really very simple.