Want to Visit London’s National Portrait Gallery? Hurry Up—It’s Closing for Three Years Starting in 2020

Art museums typically try to
keep their doors open, even during major renovations. But London’s
National Portrait Gallery has announced that it will close for
nearly three years as it undergoes a £35.5 million ($45 million)
revamp designed to expand its entrance and overhaul its galleries.
The unprecedented decision will mean that the majority of its
celebrated collection will go into storage for years. There will
also be some job losses, which has raised alarm bells among
onlookers in the museum world. 

The national art museum is
stressing the upside: While it is closed between June 2020 and
spring 2023, the gallery will loan around 300 portraits of
Britain’s greats to UK museums, as well as sending parts of the
collection on a global tour to Japan, Australia, and the United
States. 

The renovation
was expected to largely be
completed while the museum remained open to visitors, but the
institution said in a statement that the closure was necessary “in
order to complete the project efficiently, and to safeguard
visitors, members of staff, and the
collection.”  

The NPG confirms that the
temporary shuttering will result in losses among front-of-house
staff. The museum has also had to secure additional storage
off-site, a spokeswoman confirms. She adds that “where possible
staff will be offered part-time working and career-break
opportunities.”

Under the directorship of former
director Charles Saumarez Smith, the NPG completed the
ambitious Ondaatje Wing in
2000 while remaining open to the public. That project increased
public and gallery space by 50 percent, while the new project does
not significantly expand much-needed exhibition
space. 

The NPG’s planned traveling
international exhibitions, which offer an important source of
revenue, include “Tudors to Windsors,” a show of portraits of
British royalty that is heading to the Ueno Royal Museum in Tokyo
in the fall of  2020. The show is sponsored by Fuji TV.
Another exhibition called “Love Stories” heads to a venue in
Australia next year before traveling to the US.

During its closure, the NPG will
also send highlights from its collection to UK museums in York,
Liverpool, Newcastle, and Bath. The gallery has already launched a
scheme to lend portraits to smaller museums and venues in places
closely associated with their sitters, such as Vanessa Bell’s
portrait of her sister Virginia Woolf, which went on view in
Charleston in the South East of England, where Bell had a country
home. 

In a statement, the gallery’s
director Nicholas Cullinan focused on the benefit of the loan
exhibitions rather than the impact of the museum’s lengthy closure.
He called it “a unique and important chapter in our history as we
embark on our journey to deliver a transformed National Portrait
Gallery.” He added: “We look forward to hearing from other
organizations who are interested in working with us during this
time, so that we can make the most of this extraordinary
opportunity to circulate a national collection as widely as
possible.”

Some are already questioning the
wisdom of such a long closure, however. Art historian and
broadcaster Bendor Grosvenor tells Artnet News:
“The NPG is treating its
audience with contempt. To sneak out the news in this way is
wrong.” He says that serious questions must now be asked about the
project. Grosvenor welcomes the enhanced UK loans, but calls the
expensive storage of so much of the collection an “outrage.” He is
also concerned that “long-serving and knowledgeable” staff could
lose their jobs. 

“A museum development that
necessitates alienating visitors, and spending significant sums to
do so, is at risk of failing before it even begins,” Grosvenor
says.  

The post Want to Visit London’s National Portrait Gallery?
Hurry Up—It’s Closing for Three Years Starting in 2020 appeared
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