Good morning. We're here in Room 59, having taken down Sebastiano del Piombo's 'Raising
of Lazarus' from Room 9 yesterday. This is the last move we are doing as a consequence
of the the installation of the Sainsbury Wing and now we're just going to move the picture
and its frame, which is separate from the picture, and hang it in Room 32.
Alright fellas, if you're all set, let's go.
We've had to carry out all this sequence of moves and remove the Early Renaissance
collection from the Sainsbury Wing because of NG200. The NG200 project is a
building refurbishment, effectively, of the Sainsbury Wing, mainly to make the Sainsbury Wing
a much more acceptable entrance to the National Gallery. It's quite invasive in terms of building
work and because of that, even though it doesn't involve the galleries themselves, the risk
to the collection in that part of the building would be too great. So that's why we've moved
the entire Early Renaissance collection out of that section and then we've tried to re-establish
small elements of that section of the collection in the rest of the building, in other words
in the Wilkins, in the the rest of the hang. So what we have to do now is just reorientate
the picture. It's been on its side all night. We have to get it back up into the right orientation
onto the large piece of equipment we've got here in order to install it.
Okay so we've removed all of the pictures from the target wall, the wall
where NG1 is going to hang. It's now twenty [minutes] to 10:00.
We have to get the Gallery ready for opening, so what we're going to do is move all our
equipment into this area. We can section off Room 32, then we'll have a little break
and then we'll come back and the rest of the morning will be spent hanging NG1 and completing
that wall.
[Music]
We've come back after a nice Art Handling cup of tea and we're just setting up now and getting
ready to hang the large work. First thing we have to do is to work out where the big hanging
bracket goes. You can just see it on the floor over there. So that big sort of L-shaped
piece of steel that acts as a shelf and the picture actually sits on top of that and then
is screwed back to the wall. Once that's happened, we can then deal with the frame and
we can get the frame on. So the frame is a completely separate element for the actual
installation at this point.
[Music]
We've managed to remove all the screens. What we have to do now is get the frame and reorientate
the frame on the floor in front of a picture and pop it on the picture just to
finish off.
So we've got the frame in position now. We need to just put it upright and we'll do this
little section all by hand. The frame's not too heavy.
NG1 is up, Sebastiano del Piombo's 'Raising of Lazarus', now moved from Room 9, completing the move
into Room 32. It's taken us precisely 26 hours, I would say. So in other words it takes
about two days to move this picture. We will tidy up the room, finish up. Because the Gallery
is open at the moment, we won't be able to move all of our large equipment through so
that will stay until tomorrow morning and we'll move the equipment through before opening.
Also we will complete the Room 9 hang tomorrow, so that will be the last part, and
that's the final, final act of the removal of the Sainsbury Wing in preparation for NG200.
[Music]