The Sainsbury Wing’s co-designer Denise Scott Brown says plans to remodel her award-winning entrance are tragically bad. Here, she explains why
The architect of the controversial Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery in London has publicly hit back at plans to completely rebuild it, accusing the new designer of “making our building look like a circus clown”.1
But Scott Brown is not happy. “She’s making our building look like a circus clown,” she said. “There are elements of tragedy – circus clowns are made up to look happy, but they’re not. This is a circus clown wearing a tutu.” Scott Brown, now aged 91, is used to fighting back when it comes to her design. Despite being one half of the 20th century’s most influential postmodernist architectural partnership, she has often been overlooked in favour of Venturi.
- 1. When it was completed in 1991, the Sainsbury Wing, designed by Denise Scott Brown and her husband Robert Venturi, was derided at first by modernists and traditionalists. Yet by the time Venturi died in 2018, it was, according to the architectural historian Dr Barnabas Calder, “in the absolute top rank of postmodern buildings internationally” and Historic England granted it Grade-I listed status. Now the building’s future is again up for grabs, and Westminster council’s planning committee will decide whether to approve plans for a substantial remodelling. The National Gallery’s director, Gabriele Finaldi, has commissioned Annabelle Selldorf to make the Sainsbury Wing more instantly appealing to visitors.
Scott Brown’s research began in the 1950s when she and her first husband, Bob Scott Brown, drove around Italy in a Morgan 3 Wheeler, discovering the mannerist art of the late Renaissance. “We stayed with friends who were reduced nobility, living in the basement of what had been their palace,” she said. “They have multipurpose spaces down below, and the scale between that and the house above worked beautifully. That was what we were trying to do with the National Gallery. And it worked.”
The Sainsbury Wing, which houses the Renaissance collection, has a facade that was intended to be a mannerist variation on the theme of the main building, designed by William Wilkins in 1832. From the street entrance, visitors enter a dark, dense, low-ceilinged room intended to feel like the crypt of an Italian church with the weight of the building above. From there, they can ascend a broad staircase towards the light, airy galleries. The suspended walkway linking the Sainsbury Wing to the main building was conceived as a Bridge of Sighs.1
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There is some history between the two women. It is unusual for an architect’s work to be revised during their lifetime, yet the Sainsbury Wing is the second Venturi Scott Brown building that Selldorf has taken on. The first was the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, which Scott Brown and her husband expanded in 1996.2
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- 1. Even the dimness of the lobby has a purpose. “By the time people come up our stairs, they look around and say ‘you’ve cleaned the paintings,’” Scott Brown says. “But we haven’t – we’ve made their eyes modulate by the coolness of the downstairs.” These subtleties may be lost on most visitors, who face long waits to get into the Sainsbury Wing. In her RIBA lecture, Selldorf described the lobby as “dark and confusing”, adding that “some people think dark and confusing is good, others not. I belong to the latter”.
- 2. Selldorf’s adaptation opened this year, and she critiqued her predecessors’ work at RIBA, saying there “just wasn’t any space for an exhibition or galleries”, and that to “reveal the full beauty of the original building” she had removed “the Venturi Scott Brown-installed supersize pergola that sort of concealed the building”. That pergola, which was designed to link the museum to the village of La Jolla, was also the subject of a row, with architectural luminaries including Sir Terry Farrell and Robert Stern among those who pleaded with the museum to keep it.
