The National Portrait Gallery is to get a new main entrance more than a century after a rich donor insisted it should not point north towards the filth of Soho and Covent Garden.
The entrance is part of a £35.5m redevelopment that is intended to make the gallery more welcoming and less crowded, and to better display contemporary crowd-pleasers such as Sam Taylor-Johnson’s video of David Beckham sleeping.
A crowdfunding appeal to help raise money for the project, the gallery’s biggest redevelopment since its current home opened in 1896, was announced by its director, Nicholas Cullinan, on Tuesday.
One of the biggest changes will be the new main entrance, created by converting three windows in the northern facade of the building into doors.
The project’s architect, Jamie Fobert, said the current narrow entrance was a result of an important Victorian donor insisting that it be placed as close to Trafalgar Square as possible so as not to face the then more disreputable areas of London. After 2023 it will point to Soho.
Outside Fobert plans to create a public forecourt, rejuvenating what is a rather shabby, sad area of railings and bins. A statue of the Victorian actor Henry Irving will remain, although moved by five metres.
“At the moment it feels like an incredibly unsafe space at night, a certain amount of antisocial behaviour happens behind Henry Irving,” said Fobert.
All the relevant bodies have been consulted and are supportive, he said, apart from some niggling fears that street performers who ply their trade in Trafalgar Square may relocate.
“I think Westminster [council] have said that there is a constant concern about how many Yodas you can have on that pavement in front of the National Gallery and whether that is something that is going to happen here.”
Another key part of the project is to create new gallery space in the building’s east wing, which is being used as offices.
All the building’s galleries will be refurbished to bring a consistency that does not currently exist as rooms have been updated at different times. “The effect of this is to create quite a fragmented experience for our visitors, the decor and ambience changes quite a bit as you walk around,” said Cullinan.
The redevelopment will create 20% more public space, although the display space will remain about the same.
Contemporary and 20th-century portraits, which often get displaced or moved because of temporary exhibitions, will be more consistently displayed.
Cullinan said: “The most common question that visitors ask is ‘Why does nobody here look like me?’”
The gallery has raised £27.4m for the project and hopes the public will be moved to contribute to the £8m that remains to be found. People can sponsor a piece of mosaic in the new forecourt for £50 or, for £50,000, adopt one of the 18 original stone busts of people such as Joshua Reynolds on the exterior of the building.
Work is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2020.
