All eyes on Portrait Gallery reopening
National Portrait Gallery's £41 million makeover about to be revealed
Also in this edition: Rembrandt homecoming, rise in private museums, Florence Nightingale’s wheelchair acquired, Banksy’s back, Maya Jama at the National Gallery
Happy Friday.
I have a dilemma. I’m looking to go on a city break to Europe this summer so I can have a fully-packed few days visiting museums and galleries. The trouble is, I can’t choose where to go! Europe is a treasure trove of museum wonders and deciding which would be best — in order to see the best — is proving impossible.
I’ve narrowed it down to three. Obviously there’s Paris, with its world-class institutions like the Louvre and Musée d'Orsay, housing masterpieces from Leonardo da Vinci to Monet. And I’ve never been to the Musée de l'Orangerie to see Monet's Water Lilies. Then there’s Florence, with its rich Renaissance heritage and iconic works like Botticelli's The Birth of Venus and Michelangelo's David. And finally Madrid: the Prado (obvs), the Reina Sofia Museum featuring Picasso's Guernica, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, another I’ve yet to visit.
I will have to spend the next few days deciding. But I guess this is what they call an embarras de richesse. Perhaps you can help?
I’ll keep you posted. Now onto the news!
Maxwell
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Need To Know
National Portrait Gallery is BACK
Three years in the making and costing £41 million, the National Portrait Gallery will reopen on Thursday, to welcome visitors for the first time since its premature closure in March 2020 due to the first lockdown. It’s a project that has faced the Covid pandemic, the Sackler donation controversy (where they gave up a £1 million gift), and the concurrent efforts to fundraise for one of the most expensive UK museum acquisitions of recent times. But the waiting is (almost) over. HRH the Princess of Wales will officially inaugurate the totally-overhauled gallery at Tuesday’s launch event.
The views of the critics are still to come, but whatever the verdict, this has been a remarkable project, one led by NPG Director Dr Nicholas Cullinan. There’s a reopened wing, a whole new entrance, a new courtyard, a new brand and logo, a new website, new uniforms — *breath* — major donations from philanthropic titans like the Blavatnik Foundation, projects with global brands such as CHANEL, a new late-night cocktail bar, a new learning centre, a new schools programme, and major BBC Radio 4 series. They’ve even bought some Victorian toilets for £2.7million. Spare a thought for the press team too — they’ve sent 23 press releases in the 23 weeks of 2023. Give them a raise.
Most importantly, there has been a total rehang of the collection, with 50 new acquisitions from artists ranging from Sir Steve McQueen to Chila Burman, and a major attempt to redress the gender imbalance of sitters. The post-19th century galleries will now see 48% of the displayed works be of women. And still new details are coming out. This week it was announced Tracey Emin has been commissioned to create an artwork for the gallery’s new doors, incorporating 45 carved brass panels, representing “every woman, throughout time”.
It’s not even open yet, and it’s already an outstanding achievement. I can’t wait to see it.
In depth: A director's tour of the newly renovated National Portrait Gallery in London
Rembrandt’s homecoming
Entry to the Rijksmuseum will be free tomorrow to celebrate the ‘homecoming’ of a Rembrandt painting seen as a potent national symbol for the Netherlands. The heroic self-portrait of the artist as a militia man will be seen alongside his epic painting The Night Watch.
The Standard Bearer was acquired for a remarkable €175 million in 2021. It was bought after the Dutch government won a diplomatic tussle with France, two years after Paris classed the painting as a national treasure. There was controversy, as Dutch taxpayers footed €150 million of the bill at a time when the pandemic was still causing major financial pressures. To appease public opinion, the work has been on a tour of the Dutch regions before arriving in Amsterdam.
Taco Dibbits, the Director of the Rijksmuseum, said the work “is one of the great self-portraits of Rembrandt and his artistic breakthrough. Proud and disarming at the same time it is a tribute to humanity.” Dibbits said its acquisition is his greatest achievement in the role, even more than the just-closed Vermeer exhibition. (Read more)
Rise in world’s private museums
The country with the largest number of private contemporary art museums has been revealed — and Germany has topped the list, beating the USA by just one. Europe’s most populated country has 60 private museums according to art collector data company Larry’s List.
In total 446 private art galleries were recorded across the world. This is a huge increase on the 317 identified in the last report in 2016. This time, five countries dominate the list: Germany (60), the US (59), South Korea (50), Greater China (30) and Italy (30). These five are home to half of all private museums in the world. In the cities list, Seoul leads the rankings with 17 museums, closely followed by Berlin with 14, Beijing with 11, New York with 10, and Athens with nine. London is joint 7th (and the UK doesn’t make the top 10).
Christoph Noe, Larry’s List founder, notes: “Museum founders see a need to nurture and protect culture and fill in a gap left by a lack of public institutions — and they have the resources to do so.” (Read more)
News from the UK
Roman find | The most intact Roman mausoleum ever to be discovered in Britain has been unearthed. Museum of London Archaeology calls it an “incredibly rare” find “with an astonishing level of preservation.” It was discovered very close to Borough Market and thankfully there are plans for its future public display. Absolutely remarkable. (Read more)
Nightingale’s wheelchair | A customised wheelchair that was used by Florence Nightingale after her return from the Crimean War has gone on public display in the UK for the first time. It’s more than a century-old, made of iron and wood, and is now in the collection of the Florence Nightingale Museum after being in the United States since 1920. (Read more)
Impressionist masterpiece | A landscape by Pierre-Auguste Renoir has become the very first French Impressionist painting in a public collection in Northern Ireland. National Museums NI has acquired the work — painted in a wood near Paris around the 1870s — through the Acceptance in Lieu Scheme. It’s now on free display at the Ulster Museum in Belfast. (Read more)
Banksy’s back | Banksy is to stage his first official exhibition in 14 years this summer — and it’s being hosted in Glasgow. The city’s Gallery of Modern Art will open CUT & RUN: 25 years card labour from Sunday, and visitors will see original stencils creating new versions of many of his famous works, and a model explaining exactly how he shredded his Girl With Balloon painting during an auction at Sotheby's. (Read more)
News from around the world
USA | A module from Tokyo’s iconic-but-recently-dismantled Nakagin Capsule Tower (below), has been acquired by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It’s the first museum to acquire a capsule from the landmark metabolist building after it was disassembled last year due to decay. The pod it has acquired was once owned by the tower's architect Kisho Kurokawa. (Read more)
France | Paris’ National Museum of the History of Immigration reopens tomorrow after another overhaul in its short history. It’s had a €2.5 million revamp to better tell the story of how migrants have shaped France. But the opening comes at a fraught time in the country as a political debate over immigration intensifies and dominates the news agenda. (Read more)
Sweden | Red paint was smeared over a Monet masterpiece at Stockholm’s National Museum in the latest climate protest. The activists, who also glued their hands to the work (which is on loan from the Musée d’Orsay), were arrested. Thankfully the work was unharmed. A spokesperson for the Nationalmuseum said “it is unacceptable to attack or destroy [cultural heritage], for any purpose whatsoever.” (Read more)
USA | America has privately notified UNESCO that it wants to rejoin the cultural protection agency, nearly six years after the Trump administration announced it was withdrawing. Rejoining is one of the Biden administration's foreign policy goals — mainly in an effort to counter what it sees as the growing influence of the Chinese government on the UN agency's agenda. (Read more)
Best of the rest
🔗 The Imperial War Museum’s new galleries — dedicated to the depiction of conflict in art — are to open on 10 November. The Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries will show 500 works.
🔗 A rediscovered masterpiece of British art depicting the Battle of Waterloo by pioneering female artist Lady Butler, is now on public display at the National Army Museum after extensive conservation.
🔗 The 140 million-year-old remains of a new species of dinosaur have just been discovered in the UK — and it’s been named after a staff member at the Natural History Museum.
🔗 Museums on the island of Guernsey will celebrate King Charles III’s birthday tomorrow by offering free admission. If you’re a reader on Guernsey, let me know!
🔗 The National Gallery is all over the tabloids today thanks to the ‘slebs attending their annual summer party — and thanks to Maya Jama’s dress.
🔗 * 3D digital facsimiles of museum objects are now quick, easy and affordable to create. An upcoming FREE webinar from ATS will explain how you can do it. Secure your place here, or email corrina.hickman@ats-heritage.co.uk
*This is sponsored content
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Munich or Berlin