I have been thinking more about the issue of how important the entry to a museum is.

One of the things we had to do at the Museum Management Institute was to pick a museum we had never been to in San Francisco – easy for me as I had never been to any of them – and then describe everything about the experience of finding them/arriving/buying a ticket before the actual visit and how good or bad it was – in those days, mostly bad. It’s tricky once one is working in a museum to remember how off-putting they can be if you’ve never visited them. Hence, the focus on what the Sainsbury Wing looks like from outside, the metal gates, the scale of the urban/civic space between it and the Wilkins Building, what it looks like at night.

When we were first discussing the redesign of the Royal Academy, one of its most loyal donors said she always still found the courtyard a little bit off-putting as if she didn’t belong there. If she felt like that, what did everyone else feel ?

So, yes, the National Gallery is right to be paying attention to its entrance and what visitors feel.

I have been asked by Bendor Grosvenor if there is any evidence that people are influenced by whether or not they go to a museum by the character of the entrance (I know he thinks the National Gallery shouldn’t be spending money on its entrance).

This is not exactly an answer to his question – I believe the National Gallery has assembled evidence on attitudes (all negative) to the current experience of the entrance to the Sainsbury Wing – but I remember being told at the Museum Management Institute which I attended long ago (1991) that visitors make up their minds about whether or not they will like a museum within thirty seconds of crossing its threshold.

When writing my book about museums, I managed to find out the source for this from Phil Nowlen, the wise man and mentor who ran the course. It came apparently from a book by Christopher Lovelock called Services Marketing: People and Strategy, now in its eighth edition. I can’t say I’ve read the book, but it suggests that entrances do matter.

We went to the dress rehearsal of the new production of Alcina at the Royal Opera House. Opens Tuesday, a beautiful, lively, clever, if quirky production, directed by Richard Jones and designed by Antony McDonald. I couldn’t quite figure out what it would have been like when it opened as an opera at the recently built Theatre Royal in Covent Garden in April 1735, but it certainly is very enjoyable in 2022. I particularly liked the trees.

I have just been to the lecture which Annabelle Selldorf gave at the RIBA under the title ‘The Work We Do’, but essentially an opportunity for her to explain her thinking behind the changes she has proposed to the Sainsbury Wing, which she did extremely carefully and – to me at least – very persuasively.

Some initial thoughts:-

1. The original stepped entrance to the Wilkins Building is exceptionally inhospitable and was perhaps designed to be. There was a barracks just to the north of where the National Portrait Gallery now is from which troops could pour through the basement of the National Gallery to quell riots in Trafalgar Square. The original portico may have been designed to keep the public out, not to welcome them in. So, there is a logic, as Selldorf described, to making the Sainsbury Wing into the main entrance, not least for security purposes.

2. Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones proposed steps down from the Wilkins Portico as part of their work on the Wilkins Building, following the model of the steps which were added to the Metropolitan Museum in the mid-1960s. But this was not part of the brief to Selldorf and would probably encounter huge opposition.

3. The plans for subtly changing and enhancing the public space between the Sainsbury Wing and the Wilkins Building are exemplary, getting rid of the odd courtyard garden which was originally planned, I think, when the Keeper was resident in the south-west corner of the Wilkins Building.

4. The plans for the ground floor spaces in the Sainsbury Wing have evolved significantly. Instead of being designed as a contrast to the Venturi Scott Brown building, they have now been designed with much greater sympathy to Venturi Scott Brown’s original monumental vocabulary, including keeping their Egyptian columns, the same ceiling detailing and rustication. The original ground floor spaces were severely compromised by the bookshop and much extraneous clutter and it will be a great benefit that these spaces are cleaned up and restored to a version of their original appearance.

5. There is a great deal about the project which has not really appeared in the public domain, including a proper entrance from Trafalgar Square to new research facilities.

Over the summer, there has been much opposition to the scheme. I hope that the lecture will be published. It should be because it made so clear how much care and thought has gone into the scheme, including more effective illustrations than the hideous CGI which made the entrance look like an airport terminal.

I see that the Art Newspaper is reporting the availability of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry for rent (https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/11/01/everything-has-a-price-estate-agent-lists-historic-foundry-that-once-cast-big-bens-bells). It’s a wonderful site and I can see that it could potentially be turned into an art gallery. But I am still hoping that the relevant heritage agencies – most notably, Historic England, Tower Hamlets and the National Heritage Lottery Fund – will see the benefit in retaining its historic use which is at least as much a part of its historic interest as the building. There was a feeling from some of the heritage agencies that London did not need to protect a place of manufacture. But manufacturing is part of London’s history as well as banking.