National POrtrait Gallery

Allie BiswasIn order to discuss how the National Portrait Gallery seeks to protect its institutional legacy, it’s first necessary to understand what the gallery represents. Could you talk about the institution’s founding and what it was intended to stand for?

Nicholas CullinanWhen we were founded, in 1856, we were the first portrait gallery in the world. Now there are other portrait galleries, in Edinburgh, in Washington DC, in Canberra, and some other quasi–portrait galleries as well. But they’re still quite few and far between.

The discussions around the founding of the National Portrait Gallery in the 1850s included people like Thomas Carlyle, the eminent but also controversial historian, and lots of politicians—it was discussed in the Houses of Parliament. Discussions focused on why having a portrait gallery was necessary and what it could do. It was a bit in opposition to how other countries documented their history. Instead of the grand historical paintings that you see in Versailles, which talk about French history, the Gallery could be a tapestry of individuals and lives; that was more British, somehow. The other idea was that it would give people, ordinary people, examples to emulate of people who had done remarkable things. I think there’s something quite noble, and potentially also quite patriarchal, about some of those founding principles.

Our transformational Inspiring People project is a complete rethinking of the Gallery. As part of the project, we went back through the Gallery’s history, back through the archive. Even the new logo we have, this interlocking NPG, has its roots in a sketch we found in the archive, from 1893, drawn by the Gallery’s first director, Sir George Scharf. In a way, it’s the perfect visual metaphor for what we’ve done, which is to make the NPG feel more relevant, more engaging, and in some ways more contemporary, by really thinking through its role historically.

In some ways, our role remains unchanged: we are a gallery that tells the story of British history through individuals and different lives, thinking about identity and achievement and, of course, about portraiture as a medium. But in other ways, although the role remains the same, our span has changed a lot, because Britain of course is changing in terms of its populations and discussions, and we need to move with that.

ABWhen you joined the organization, eight years ago now, did you come into the role understanding that a major overhaul of the building and/or the collection was going to be required?

NCThere was an idea in the job pack about a transformation project. At that point it was undefined, and was only just beginning to be discussed. For example, we have a great learning department that leads amazing programs with many different groups, including both children and adult learners, but our one dark, basement studio was not fit for the purpose. So there was the idea of creating a new learning center. There was also the idea of making the building work properly again, because, for example, the lifts didn’t go down to the ground floor anymore. There were practical problems. Then also, some of our galleries hadn’t been looked at for thirty years, so it made sense to rethink the collection. I was brought in to shape, lead, and deliver the project, so that’s what I’ve been doing for the last eight years.

ABHow did you separate the refurbishment of the spaces from a rehang of the collection? Do you think of these things as separate or are they intrinsically connected?

NCThe Gallery’s redevelopment project is really holistic. That’s what was needed, because for the first forty years after the founding, we had quite an itinerant existence—we moved around, operating from different locations. Then our current building was purpose-built for us in 1896, by Ewan Christian. Since then, there have been major additions, including the Duveen Wing in 1933 and the Ondaatje Wing in 2000.

What that’s meant is that the Gallery has felt, over the decades, maybe a bit disjointed. Even aesthetically: you would go to the nineteenth-century galleries and they would be radically different from the contemporary galleries. It was exciting to take a step back and consider the whole. Looking at the entire building and the entire collection meant reinterpreting these things, as well as considering our branding, our logo, our digital presence, and thinking about what we’re acquiring and how we want to grow the collection. It was also about reflecting on the culture of working here. It was about changing everything together, in unison, which is really an amazing thing to be able to do, to take this much-loved Victorian national institution and bring it ever more into the present, hopefully making it fit for the next twenty, twenty-five years.

ABAs a curator who’s worked at the Tate, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and now the National Portrait Gallery, how do you feel about collection rehangs generally, regardless of whether the building is changing?

NCThey’re separate work streams, but the building project, which involves thinking about architecture, light, and space, of course overlaps very clearly with the rehang. Before this, the building and the collection were often at odds with each other. There was a tendency, for example, to close all the windows in the building; it felt very dark and a bit claustrophobic. We’ve restored the building to how it was originally intended. Our refurbishment has allowed the building to look the way it did back in 1896. This project was about making the collection fit with the building.

That said, of course a rehang is also an intellectual exercise because it’s not just about how you hang something physically, it’s about the interpretation, the intellectual framework. So that’s been a whole other huge project.

ABLet’s talk about the criteria for that. What was the starting point when you first started discussions around it?

NCWe started the project eight years ago, and it’s changed over those years, as you would expect. But it began with basic principles: everyone was aware that a rehang was necessary, and that rewriting the labels was necessary, because they were just quite outdated, even in terms of the information they were providing. The language and tone felt like a textbook. This wasn’t just us deciding on a whim to do these things; the whole project was based on visitor research—we would talk to our visitors about what they loved about the Gallery and what they thought worked less well. And equally we would talk to people who didn’t come to the Gallery, or never had, and find out why that was.

ABHow long did that audience-research process take?

NCIt’s ongoing; we always do it. But we did a big audience-research exercise in the runup to the project and those things were identified very clearly. Going back to the rehang, when I started, the first discussions were founding principles. For example, do we stick with chronology or do we go for an achronological, thematic hang? On balance, we thought that chronology was important for a museum of history that attracts a variety of people, including schoolchildren and people from outside the UK who are coming to try to understand where they are and the culture of the country they’re in.

That said, of course, there are galleries that cut across chronology by looking at certain mediums—miniatures or silhouettes or print culture or life and death masks. There, we deliberately have a span that cuts across different times. And we’ve done some contemporary interventions in the historical galleries, with works by Elizabeth Peyton, for example.

ABHave you commissioned any new works?

NCYes. We’re unique in our commissioning; I think we’re the only museum in the UK that actually commissions for the collection. Of course we also acquire, and we’ve acquired incredible things recently, like Joshua Reynolds’s Portrait of Mai [c. 1776]. That’s a game changer for us—it’s probably the most important painting we have now. For it not just to go on display here but actually to enter a museum collection for the first time in its history, so that now everyone can see it, is so wonderful.

When we reopen in June, there will be more than sixty works that won’t have been seen before, and they range from commissions like Toyin Ojih Odutola’s portrait of Zadie Smith, and Steve McQueen’s portrait of Nick Serota, to acquisitions that we’ve made, especially with the Chanel Culture Fund, that have focused on women artists and sitters. We’ve acquired important works, such as self-portraits by Celia Paul and Everlyn Nicodemus—the first painted self-portrait by a Black female artist to enter the collection. Also, Michael Armitage’s beautiful tapestry of key workers from 2020—I mean, I could go on. An amazing Gainsborough of the ballet dancer Gaetano Vestris [c. 1780–81] that we were given. When people come in, there’ll be a lot of new things to see, but we’ve also brought things out that have been in the collection but we haven’t shown before. We’ve done a huge research exercise going through our archives. We have a collection of 250,000 photographs, and photography has come much more to the fore of our new displays, from the Victorian era to now. People will be in for some surprises.

ABWhat’s the institution’s history of commissioning portraits?

NCIt’s relatively recent. When we were established, there were various rules, and one of them was that no one could enter the NPG’s collection as the subject of a portrait until they’d been dead for ten years (unless they were the reigning monarch or their spouse). In the 1960s, one of my predecessors, Sir Roy Strong, began, with the trustees, to question some of these rules. For example, photography hadn’t been collected, acquired, or exhibited until then, and Strong changed that, leading to amazing things like a Cecil Beaton exhibition we did in the late 1960s, a huge blockbuster. After that, we abolished the ten-year rule, and that meant the trustees began to commission living sitters.

The trustees decide the sitter, and then we—I and the curatorial team—decide on the artist who should undertake it, which is fun. When I was interviewed for the job, almost nine years ago now, the trustees asked me, If you could commission a portrait of any sitter by any artist, what would it be, and my answer was Malala Yousafzai by Shirin Neshat. I thought of Malala as someone who’s now based in the UK but is a figure of world significance, and thought we shouldn’t just find a British figurative artist, it could be wider. We have Holbein and Van Dyck; they weren’t born in the UK, but they lived and worked here. So we chose Shirin and made it happen. Now it’s one of our best-known works.

ABIn terms of the actual building work, the architectural firm you’ve been working with is Jamie Fobert’s. I’m interested to hear about the process of selecting an architect.

NCThe first few years, 2015 until about 2018, were focused on shaping the project, raising the money, and then we were ready to appoint an architect. We had pretty much every major architect you can think of apply. We had an incredible short list and were delighted to appoint Jamie in 2018.

ABWhat were your criteria when you were looking at these architects—what were you looking for?

NCSomeone who would understand the building and how to work with it, while also being able to evolve it. It was also important to find someone who would know how to moderate a conversation between each of its different epochs. We didn’t want someone to just come in and slap their aesthetic, or ego, on the building. It was time to have someone very clearly shape the building and add their signature to it, but to do that by moderating a conversation so that the building itself would feel much more cohesive. And Jamie has been brilliant at that.

ABThe ultimate reason for any type of refurbishment on this scale is that you’re thinking about your audiences. That’s ultimately what creates a legacy for an institution. How are you going to gauge the success of this project? And is there more to come in terms of the refurbishment?

NCThis is being done to get the Gallery in the best shape for hopefully twenty or thirty years. So its success will lie in how much it raises the profile of the Gallery, makes the building a more pleasurable and beautiful place to spend time in, and how much people enjoy it and hopefully keep coming back. I wouldn’t say that the headlines, the reviews the first week, are the marker of it. Obviously that’s something that you keep an eye on, but it’s not the final word. We’re not doing this for a newspaper cycle.

To the second point, we’re already working on the next phase. We just bought this former ticket booth opposite the Gallery and we’re working on plans for that, which will take a couple of years. We’ll have to raise the money, appoint an architect. There’s a big underground space where we can program things that we can’t do now. We have beautiful galleries, but they’re quite circumscribed in a way. So for the first time, we’ll be able to consider installations, film and video, immersive art, and we’ll rebuild the educational pavilion as well. We’re also finishing a ten-year plan for the Gallery, taking it to 2033, because I don’t want us to peak this year, or this summer.

ABThe building was closed for three years—how do you keep a brand visible when you do something like that?

NCThe decision to close was very carefully made, but it was the right decision in that it safeguarded the collection. We don’t have a big building with wings that you can isolate, so it would have been quite risky to be doing building work with the portraits still on display. Looking after the collection was the top priority.

It also meant that the project took a year less to complete and cost a million pounds less. If this had been a four-year project with only bits of the galleries open and lots of dust, it would have been a nightmare. We talked to everyone who had done big transformations and they said, If you can close, close, because if you don’t, you’ll close halfway through anyway.

So then we thought, Be bold, close the Gallery in London, get it done as quickly as possible and in the most effective way, and then use that unprecedented chance to show the collection more widely around the UK and internationally than ever before. And that’s exactly what we’ve done. We did many amazing exhibitions around the UK, including a major Tudor exhibition in Bath and Liverpool—things we’ll never be able to lend again in terms of quality and quantity. Great projects like Coming Home, where we lent portraits back to the places their sitters were from, which has had an amazing response, and Hold Still during the pandemic—that was the competition where, with our patron, the princess of Wales, we encouraged people to send photographs documenting their experience of lockdown. We did it as a digital exhibition—I think it’s had 7 million page views now—and then we did it as a nationwide exhibition of billboards and posters on bus stops, and 5 million people saw it. No physical exhibition gets those numbers; that project reached millions of people who museums normally don’t reach, and made people feel engaged and involved in a way they wouldn’t normally.

And then we’ve been able to engage people with a major international series of tours and exhibitions; I think it’s four or five continents that we’ve been around. We just thought, St. Martin’s Place is a building site, forget about it. Let’s be bold and let’s share the collection much more widely than we ever could again.

ABDo you think that kind of work will continue, despite the building reopening, now that you’ve understood how successful it can be?

NCDefinitely. We’re really passionate about our national program and working in partnership. For example, Reynolds’s Portrait of Mai will start to go around the country after he’s been here for a while.

ABThe NPG is a national institution that receives both public and private funding. How did conversations start relating to sponsors for the transformation project?

NCThis was going to be by far the biggest project the Gallery had undertaken and the most amount of money the Gallery had tried to raise. I just hit the ground running, already starting to fundraise. We actually overfundraised; we exceeded by about £10 million.

ABIs that quite rare?

NCI think so. Not only did we overfundraise, the project ran on time and on budget, which is unusual. In Britain, one of the major funders that you need to get on board for this type of project is the National Lottery Heritage Fund. They accepted our first application and generously gave us £9.4 million. Other trusts and foundations followed, as did donors. Donors support what you’re doing but they don’t dictate things. They might say, Well, I want to support the learning center—Mildred and Simon Palley wanted to focus on this—but they don’t dictate what you do with the funds.

Then when Portrait of Mai came around—I mean, the biggest acquisition we’d ever made before this was the Van Dyck self-portrait [c. 1640], which was £10 million. And that was a lot. But times that by five; £50 million was a huge amount, and more than the whole building project cost.

So those two things total almost £100 million. It’s a lot.

ABDid you receive support from government?

NCThe government gives you grants in aid for your running costs, but they vary year by year and depend on what you’re doing. Our grant in aid used to be 29 percent, so we had to raise the other 71 percent. They did support some elements of the capital campaign—they invested in critical infrastructure works and supported us with running costs that took place during the redevelopment.

ABLet’s finish with the opening program, exhibitions of Paul McCartney and Yevonde. What was the thinking around that?

NCYevonde was a pioneer of color photography and we had a great collection of her work already. Then two years ago we acquired her entire photographic archive of negatives and began a big research project, funded by the Chanel Culture Fund, to archive, document, and print them.

Then in the summer of 2020 Paul McCartney got in touch and said that he’d been going through his archives and had found all of these photographs that he’d taken of the early days of the Beatles. He remembered that he used to take photos, but he thought they’d gone. He said, Would you like to have a look and maybe they could form a nice little display. What we worked with Paul to select were 250 unseen images. The world had never seen any of them. And they are incredible. I mean, just seeing the Beatles backstage on The Ed Sullivan Show before they step out and change the world. . . . It’s really moving to see some of those images and how tender and how intimate they are. So both exhibitions—Yevonde: Life and Colour and Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm—are filled with new discoveries.