Et was the Victorian era of progressive thinking, when Thomas Carlyle proclaimed that world history was nothing but the lives of great people, that led to the founding of an independent museum for the portraits of the most important figures in British history in the mid-nineteenth century. Their achievements should encourage the British to imitate them. This spirit of the time was reflected in the motion for the establishment of a National Portrait Gallery brought to the House of Lords in 1856 by the politician and historian Lord Stanhope.
Stanhope referred to an anecdote according to which, prior to the naval battle at Abukir, Admiral Nelson conjectured whether victory would earn him a royal crown or a tomb in Westminster Abbey. This image of the national hero willing to risk his life for the worse alternative for the sake of honor led Stanhope to argue that the prospect of being found worthy of inclusion in a collection of portraits of distinguished men provided additional impetus for the accomplishment of great deeds for the greater glory of the nation.
“A gallery by people for people”
Underpinning these patriotic considerations for the new museum was a British predilection for the narrative tradition of historiography, stripped of the ballast of theoretical abstraction. Benjamin Disraeli, who like Carlyle was one of the advocates of a National Portrait Gallery, put this in a nutshell when admonishing the title character of his novel “Contarini Fleming” not to read history books but only biographies, “because that is life without theory”. .
Some 170 years after its founding, London’s National Portrait Gallery, which has just undergone a major refurbishment, has remained true to its founding mission of telling the story of the United Kingdom through portraits from the Tudors to the present day. This is also written in the light new entrance hall, which the architect Jamie Fobert, who was entrusted with the redesign of the late Victorian building, obtained from the old walls with the help of Purcell’s heritage preservation expertise. Below the explanation is the addition, underlining the shift in emphasis in the post-heroic age, that the museum is “a gallery by people for people, a place for everyone”.
Blocked rooms were uncovered
Like all museums today, the National Portrait Gallery has faced the challenge of making its collection more inclusive, diverse and relevant to meet the demands of the times. Architecturally and curatorially, the museum, under the direction of Nicholas Cullinan, has mastered the balancing act of reconciling history and zeitgeist. Symbolic of the blending of tradition and innovation is the new monogram with the curved, interwoven letters NPG. It is based on a drawing by George Scharf, the first director, which has been given a modern twist through a subtle intervention. Fobert dealt with Ewan Christian’s building, which opened in 1896 and was modified by later interventions, in a similar way. Uncovering hidden historical details such as the Victorian terrazzo floor, Fobert has always worked with the existing structure, not against it, to create a clear, coherent sequence of spaces accentuated by bold colors from the previous tangle.
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