National Portrait Gallery – Blavatnik Family Foundation

Behind the scenes as the National Portrait Gallery reopens

Posted on June 7, 2023 (June 7, 2023) by Christine Ongsueng

The cost was originally supposed to be £35.5 million. In fact it has come in at just over £41 million. But that overspend, Cullinan says, was deliberate, after the gallery received an “extra” £10 million donation from Leonard Blavatnik, the industrialist who has become Britain’s most generous arts benefactor. “Doing what we wanted to do for £35 million was always going to be tight,” Cullinan says. “The extra money from the Blavatnik Foundation enabled us to concentrate on quality.” […]

Unseen Paul McCartney photos to reopen National Portrait Gallery

Posted on January 25, 2023 (February 1, 2023) by Christine Ongsueng

Sir Paul McCartney’s artistic talents are finally being brought out from the shadow cast by his late wife and children. His photographic skills have emerged in a series of unseen photographs he took in the early 1960s when The Beatles were on the verge of exploding onto the international scene. The musician approached the National Portrait Gallery in 2020 having discovered in his archive the batch of photographs he took in 1963 and 1964. They will be displayed for the first time in one of the first exhibitions due to be held at the gallery when it reopens this June after a three-year renovation. Cullinan said there would be 20 percent more public space and that while the “best known and much-loved portraits” would remain on display, there would be a “greater variety and richness in what we show and how we show”. It has secured the support of a number of new donors including Sir Leonard Blavatnik, the Ukrainian-born businessman who is one of the wealthiest people in the world and who has donated tens of millions of pounds to British cultural institutions in the past decade. […]

National Portrait Gallery announces line up of major exhibitions to mark its reopening in June 2023

Posted on January 25, 2023 (February 1, 2023) by Christine Ongsueng

Today, the National Portrait Gallery announced that after the largest redevelopment in its history, its doors will reopen again on 22 June 2023, with a programme of major exhibitions. The transformational Inspiring People project has been made possible by major grants from the Blavatnik Family Foundation, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Garfield Weston Foundation and the Ross Foundation. In addition to the Gallery’s year-long programme of exhibitions, visitors to the new Gallery will experience a complete redisplay of the Collection and a transformational refurbishment of the building, as well as an enhanced welcome and greater access through the new Ross Place entrance. The designs, by Jamie Fobert Architects working in partnership with Purcell, will also see the return of the Gallery’s East Wing to public use as the Weston Wing, restoring original gallery spaces and creating new retail and catering facilities. The first floor will become The Blavatnik Wing, encompassing nine galleries, which will explore society and culture in the 19th and early 20th centuries. […]

New exhibition space! National Portrait Gallery buys former Victorian public lavatory

Posted on December 30, 2022 (January 17, 2023) by Christine Ongsueng

London’s National Portrait Gallery (NPG) has made a most unexpected acquisition: a ticket kiosk on a small traffic island just outside its new entrance. But it is the hidden space below street level that is important: a former underground Victorian public lavatory, which closed in the 1970s. Although the elegant hexagonal kiosk at the Trafalgar Square end of Charing Cross Road, at the junction with Irving Street, may look Edwardian, it dates from the 1980s and was used for selling theatre tickets. After closing a few years ago, it was put on the property market in 2021. The Art Newspaper can report that several months ago the NPG succeeded in buying the “Iconic Island” from a property company, for a sum of roughly £3m, with funds provided by Len Blavatnik, the Ukrainian-born American British businessman. […]

National Portrait Gallery announces reopening date in June

Posted on December 15, 2022 (January 17, 2023) by Christine Ongsueng

The National Portrait Gallery in London has set the date it will reopen three years on from its closure due to renovation. The public can enjoy the improvements, the biggest development since the building in St Martin’s Place, close to Trafalgar Square, opened in 1896, on June 22, 2023. As part of the development, a new Blavatnik Wing will host more than 100 years of British portraits in nine galleries as part of the gallery’s Inspiring People project. Paintings of naturalist Charles Darwin, and writers Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, the Bronte sisters, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and others will help visitors to explore society and culture in the 19th and early 20th centuries. […]

National Portrait Gallery will get new wing as part of refurbishment

Posted on November 23, 2022 (January 17, 2023) by Christine Ongsueng

The Blavatnik Wing will host portraits of Charles Darwin, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, the Bronte sisters and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. The National Portrait Gallery in London will get a new wing as part of its refurbishment when it reopens in 2023. The Blavatnik Wing will host more than one hundred years of British portraits in nine galleries as part of the gallery’s Inspiring People project. Paintings of naturalist Charles Darwin, and writers Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, the Bronte sisters and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor will help visitors to explore society and culture in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The gallery said the gift from the Blavatnik Family Foundation will also help support the biggest development since its building in St Martin’s Place opened in 1896. […]

National Portrait Gallery to get new wing as part of revamp

Posted on November 23, 2022 (January 17, 2023) by Christine Ongsueng

The National Portrait Gallery will get a new wing as part of its refurbishment when it reopens in 2023, after the institution received a £10m gift. The Blavatnik Wing will host more than 100 years of British portraits in nine galleries as part of the London gallery’s Inspiring People project. Nicholas Cullinan, the director of the National Portrait Gallery, said it was “incredibly grateful” to the British-American industrialist turned media mogul Sir Leonard Blavatnik and his wife for the gift for helping the project and the gallery’s “future development”. Blavatnik said: “The Blavatnik Family Foundation is proud to support the National Portrait Gallery and we look forward to next year’s opening.” […]