The National Gallery is expanding its empire in more ways than one. It has announced that the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma is its designer for a new wing of the gallery which will house modern and contemporary art — paintings of the 20th and 21st century. It’ll cost £350 million, and it’s gratifying that at a time when museums are universally cash-strapped, the gallery has already attracted £375 million as part of a larger funding initiative. Donors like The Julia Rausing Trust have given generously, which says a lot about the charm and persuasiveness of the Director of the National Gallery, Sir Gabriele Finaldi.
There are two important aspects to this. One is the physical presence of the new gallery, in a strategic site between Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square. No one, but no one, will lament the replacement of the building on the site now, a hideous late-1960s block designed by Charles Pike — the site was bought by clever former director, Sir Neil Macgregor, 30 years ago, a far-sighted move. But there may be mixed views about Kuma’s design. The architect for the Tokyo Olympics stadium (and of a hideous portico to Angers cathedral) has come up with something that looks like the frontage for the John Lewis department store on Oxford Street.
The material — Portland stone — is obviously right, but the paving outside looks oddly like garden decking, complete with — in the flattering computer mock-up — umbelliferous flower beds. The roof garden will, no doubt, be handy for summer drinks parties, but it’s a Homes & Gardens aesthetic in the back part of a grand public space.
The whole thing is strangely bland, though it ticks all the approved boxes, such as “the inclusion of the bespoke Climate & Social Action Design Framework. The approach to sustainability is also defined, alongside a clear strategy for considering and applying social value principles across the life cycle of the project”. Don’t ask.
The physical expansion will, however, provide enormous exhibition space for the National; the new building’s show space will be twice that of the Sainsbury Wing. But how to fill it?
A leap into the 21st century
More important, however, is the expansion of the National Gallery remit. Not to put too fine a point on it, the National is muscling in on territory that was formerly occupied by the Tate galleries, notably Tate Modern. The National Gallery is 200 years old, so of course over that time its remit has changed and the boundaries of historic art have steadily inched into the 20th century.
Since 1915, under the terms of a commission chaired by Lord Curzon, there was a broad agreement that the National would be home for art up to 1900, with the Tate accounting for more recent work. While this date has shifted, for the National to expand its remit to include contemporary, 21st-century art (hello, Tracey Emin) is something else. It reopens the question of where its remit stops and where that of Tate Modern takes over. Because in any competition for funding, especially private donations, the National Gallery will always have an advantage over the bossy, didactic, perennially underfunded Tate. Even Tate Britain, which has its own beautiful building, could never quite differentiate itself from the National, given that some of the prizes of British art, such as Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire and Constable’s beloved Hay Wain, belong to the National.
Stepping heavily on Tate’s toes
In 2009, the National Gallery reassured the Tate that it had “no intention to seek bequests or long-term loans of early 20th-century paintings” unless they were, for instance, late work by 19th-century artists. Now it says that its Project Domani (Project Tomorrow), which will eventually amount to a £750 million fund to provide for the future, “also includes the move to extend its historic collection beyond 1900, making it the only museum in the world which exclusively displays paintings, where visitors will be able to view the entire history of painting in the Western tradition”. But do we really need the National to replicate the function of the Tate galleries?
I would say not. The National does what it is meant to do brilliantly under Finaldi — sign up now for the wonderful Zurburán exhibition which opens in May. But it’s not healthy for one gallery to have a remit of Absolutely Everything and Everywhere (so long as it’s painting in the Western European tradition) in the whole history of art to the present day.
There’s another problem, which is that the National Gallery, while attracting hundreds of millions of pounds in capital funding, actually risks a funding shortfall of £8.2 million in the coming year which it is trying to address through voluntary redundancies and other measures. There’s always a problem of income versus capital for institutions, but there’s an odd mismatch between the looming deficit and the pot of gold for the new wing.
It is also hard to reconcile the National’s large ambitions with the vicissitudes of smaller London museums and galleries, let alone those elsewhere. To those who have, more shall be given, it seems. But it’s not a healthy way for the arts to function in Britain.
