NG200 (ctd.)
June 24 2022
Video: National Gallery
The National Gallery have put footage of their press briefing for their 200th anniversary plans online. In the presentation above you can see more details of the Sainsbury Wing plans I mentioned yesterday. There's also something about boosting digital outreach, but no mention of whether the NG will go for Open Access for their images. Which, if they're serious about reaching out to new audiences digitally, they would do in a heartbeat.
The element of the NG200 plans which has caught the news today is the proposal to rehang the gallery, with a more thematic hang. So Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus, for example, will hang next to Wright of Derby's Experiment with an Airpump. There's coverage of the plan here in The Times. On Twitter, the Great Waldemar has voiced his opposition. I think it could be fun, as long it's not forever, which in the video above Gabriele Finaldi makes clear it isn't.
The price for all this, incidentally, is £95 million. Most of that will go on the Sainsbury Wing changes. But museum rehangs, once you get the registrars, and the conservators, and the art handlers, and the curators, and the interpretation teams involved, are also not cheap.
