Annabelle Selldorf’s National Gallery Renovation Brings Space, Light, and Style to a Much-Loved London Institution

Enter Annabelle Selldorf, and her New York–based team at Selldorf Architects, for whom this has been her first institutional job in London. She’s no stranger to the city, having created galleries for Zwirner, Werner, and Hauser & Wirth in banks, townhouses, and former grand offices. And no stranger to museums, having made interventions in the Museum of Art San Diego, the Hirshhorn, and the Clark Institute in the U.S. In April, her impressive restructuring of the Frick Collection in New York was revealed.

“I often think back to the Wallraf-Richartz Museum that we visited in Cologne a lot when I was a child,” says Selldorf, who grew up in the German city. “Its entrance was filled with daylight and it felt like a big public forum.” With her remodeling of the Sainsbury Wing’s ground floor, she has created something similar in London—an uninterrupted swathe of space where visitors can linger in a book store or coffee bar, or head straight to the galleries up the original Eastern staircase in powerful black granite. At its top, a brand-new artwork by land artist Richard Long has been created—a swirling cosmos painted in pale gray mud on a black background. “We wanted a contemporary work,” explains Finaldi. “Something to match the site-specific Bridget Riley commission that marked the opening of the Wing in 1991.”

In London, Selldorf’s memories of Cologne mean she brought in huge washes of daylight to the ground floor by cutting away half of the first-floor ceiling to create a double-height space, and leaving the mezzanine where Locatelli will be serving his Maritozzi—special southern Italian doughnuts that can’t be found anywhere else in London. She replaced the black smoked glass panes that filled the eastern wall with clear ones that provide a view into the gallery from the street.

“We really did think a lot about the original architecture,” says Selldorf, “but also what’s changed in 30 years. We needed to accommodate a lot more visitors and also to allow them to feel that they can do as they please. That this isn’t a gallery to be afraid of, or intimidated by.”

Instead, visitors are greeted by a vast LED screen on the back wall—34 feet long—on which a constantly changing loop of artworks are shown, often in close-up, from the National Gallery’s world-class trove. “I’m not someone who is that interested in technology,” says Selldorf, “but on the screen, you can see art in detail, and it does that in a very equitable way.” Among the famous paintings brought to public scrutiny are Constable’s The Hay Wain and Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait. Upstairs, treasures include The Battle of San Romano by Ucello, once on show in the Medici Palace, now in a newly made frame and vibrant after years of restoration. An altarpiece from a now-demolished Florentine church—San Piero Maggiore—was once displayed in bits over various galleries and has been reassembled into one astonishing whole.

Selldorf’s solutions to the Sainsbury Wing have been carried out with some neutrality. A pale limestone floor is similar to the York stone of the pavement outside the building, allowing a seamless flow between the two, while the deep gray pietra serena chosen by Venturi and Scott Brown is brought right down to the base of the building.

But this is, first and foremost, a place for people. “It’s a little bit my thing to say that architecture comes to life thanks to those who use it,” says Selldorf. In the Sainsbury Wing, that is most certainly the case.