A very interesting, thoughtful and carefully considered Linbury Lecture at the National Gallery (actually held at the Royal Academy) by Annabelle Selldorf in which she was able to expound her credo regarding museums and their display ahead of her re-working of the Sainsbury Wing due to re-open in May 2025.

I hope it will be published – it very much deserves to be – but in case it’s not, these are my cod notes on it (sorry, it’s a longer post than usual).

She expressed her views of what works best by describing museums and galleries she admires and has been influenced by:-

1. The Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne.

An obvious choice and a good one for someone brought up in Cologne: richly various collections displayed in interiors of post-war, social democratic austerity in a city we bombed to smithereens.

2. The Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Leo von Klenze adapted post-war by two long staircases bringing you up to the main floor (and down), not disguising the fact that it had been bombed, then renovated.

3.  The Accademia, Venice

I particularly admired her careful description of the changes made by Carlo Scarpa immediately post-war, not least in the abstract way the paintings were displayed, independent of the architecture and demonstrating the complexity of its ground plan.

4. Marfa

Donald Judd.  Industrial buildings used for the display of art.  It requires a pilgrimage to get there (she didn’t say that).

5. The Frick Collection

Another obvious choice because she is involved in both renovating and adding to it, but she demonstrated her appreciation of both the original building by Thomas Hastings (1912-1914) with its domestic interiors – no route, no labels – then John Russell Pope’s changes in the late 1930s to make it into a public gallery.  She was also responsible for the temporary display of the collection in what used to be the Whitney Museum, then briefly the Met Breuer.  Great works of art can survive and perhaps benefit from being seen in austere surroundings.  Her revised Frick, plus additions, is due to open next year.

6. The Yale University Art Gallery

Louis Kahn’s first building at Yale from 1953, of which she showed a photograph I hadn’t seen before, maybe taken when it opened.  She admires it for its ‘clarity and economy of means’ and ‘careful rendition of daylight’ (words chosen with care).

7. The National Gallery

Was the National Gallery her seventh choice ? Or have I missed one ?  She showed the planned changes to the outside first – pretty uncontroversial, cleaning up the approach and clarifying it.  Then, views of the interior and what looked like a reading area/small bookshop on what remains of the first-floor mezzanine. This part is what has been, and with some remains, contentious as an adaptation of a Grade 1 listed building. But it looks as if it is being done in such a way as to preserve the mood of the original as far as possible and sensibly dispenses with the bookshop which marred the whole spirit of the original entrance as designed by Denise Scott Brown (she wrote a brilliant, detailed description of her thinking just before it went to Westminster for approval).

It would be hard to fault the depth of Selldorf’s knowledge and deep involvement in all aspects of museum layout, museum display, and what environment works best for works of art. As she says, the changes to the Sainsbury Wing may not be so obvious after a few years and may even – a heretical thought – enhance, and surely respect, its character.