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Have you ever wondered how museums design a room to display their paintings?
Think of the last time you walked around the National Gallery
or another museum, perhaps your local art gallery.
What's the first image that comes to mind? What caught your eye?
Perhaps an intimate religious story with soft green grass and a rosy dome bleeding in the sky.
Maybe the straight jaw line of a bearded man with a pointed cup or a young woman rushing
out of the picture away from a famished dragon
but can you paint in your mind the space around those images?
The colour of the floor, the texture of the fabric lining, the decoration of the ceiling.
Maybe you're not sure and, yet, the room, the display and even the lighting are all essential to form a
bond with those pictures. Of course, museum rooms change over time: they're often refurbished and
rehung and even minute changes transform the way we make paintings part of our lives.
I'll take you behind the scenes now to see how one room
at the National Gallery, precisely Room 29, is renovated.
We'll chat with experts to understand how it's possible that a room someone else has arranged
for us is actually the space for our personal, unique, experience with art.
First stop: the Archive.
Here we can trace the room in our minds, discover its history and learn how it has changed over time.
Room 29 is located at the back of the main building but it wasn't part of the original project.
How did it come about there? You know, we needed an extra room?
- Well, the Gallery grew really
so you can see, Carlo, on this map. This map dates from 1871 and you can see that the National Gallery is
actually just this one-room deep building at the front and then gradually over the years
it extended back from that building. You can see here there's a workhouse and then over here
there is the barracks. They were demolished. So the first extension that took place was here in the
north east corner, that's what we call the Barry Rooms today. That was in 1876 and then in 1887
they constructed a central spine to the building, the Central Hall, and then over here in 1911 they
constructed another suite of galleries but it was a little bit lopsided in that the north west corner
was still vacant and that north west corner that was where they constructed Room 29.
Joseph Deveen was an art dealer and he offered the money to pay for a room which would be dedicated
to Venetian art and so we have a number of things from the archives actually that I
can show you. This is a letter to Charles Holmes, who was the Director of the National Gallery at
the time, from Joe Duveen. There's a rather nice little sort of post script at the end where he says
"How long do you think it will take to build the Venetian room. I would so much appreciate hearing
from you in detail about this" and the reason why he wants to know about it in detail was because he
was quite involved. He liked to get hands-on with things so we believe that the reason why it's
slightly different to the other rooms in the Gallery, the barrel vaulting for example, is because Joseph
Duveen personally wanted to see that and just over here, this rather large volume, is the board
minutes from early 1928 where Charles Holmes reported the proposed gift by Duveen of Room 29
to the nation and then construction work started. So the room was opened by Prince George, as was,
who later became King George VI. This is January 1930. These are all the press cuttings from the
time and you can see Prince George here next to one of the Gallery's Trustees, Lord Crawford.
And then it did change over time. The Gallery was hit by bombs during the Second World War and this
was one of the rooms that suffered particularly heavy bomb damage and then it had various
changes made to it over the years. In 1975 they put in raised platforms, they lowered the ceiling.
They did all sorts of things and so all these changes took place to the room over the years.
- What about now? We see an even more transformed gallery or we try to actually recreate the, you
know, the original flavour of the room? - The new refurbishment is, let's say, it takes something
from the original design, what is the thing that makes the room unique in the Gallery, and we celebrate
how unique this room is in the Gallery. It has the barrel vaulting and it's divided into three bays
and makes it very different from everywhere else. The last time it was refurbished, before
this one, was in the 90s when the Sainsbury Wing opened. So the false ceiling and the raised platform
disappeared and the Gallery was redecorated to match, stylistically, the other rooms.
After 30 years, now, of wear and tear and various changes the room really needed to be refurbished again.
So, for this refurbishment we tried to work with what makes this room unique and tried to make the
best of the light that's come in. So the top moulding in the 90s was painted as a green faux
marble and now it's been returned to its original white and gold scheme so that the ceiling reads
as a whole. On the walls as well there was a dark damask green lining that was somewhat somber and we
changed it to a warm olive green plain fabric that is also less distracting from the paintings.
The floor over 30 years was over-varnished and became very dark and glossy so we replaced it completely
and now we have a natural light oak that makes the room feel wider and pleasing to the eye as well
and the laylights that gives this floaty natural light to the three bays were just plain glass in
the 90s so we introduced a new contemporary frame on them that is a nod to the original leaded glass
and above the laylights on the roof we replaced the blinds with a slimmer profile that allows
better control over the amount of natural light that comes into the room and that works with
the new artificial light scheme to have the paintings presented in the best possible light.
The main principle of the project was to give the first place to the art.
Second stop: the Curators.
With a deep knowledge of the collection, they know how to make the paintings the focus of the room.
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- Paintings don't magically appear on the wall, right? Someone created the room, someone,
like you, curated the experience for us, right? So what did you have to consider when hanging Room 29?
- So Maria and Matthias and I curated a hang of the 15th and 16th century Venetian paintings in this
newly refurbished Room 29 and these include some of the most beloved pictures in the collection
such as Bellini's striking portrait of Doge Loredan or Titian's amazing 'Bacchus and Ariadne'.
So here we were and we had this newly refurbished space which looked amazing so we were really
excited but we also had to take into account the unique features of this specific room because,
unlike most other rooms in the Gallery which are rectangular, this one is made up of three bays
and in addition to that, it is also on a unique location in the Gallery, because it doesn't
have just one or two doorways but it's got four. It's really at this point where it connects
many different other galleries so we had to take into account there are four ways in which
people could first encounter, walk into this room. So we had to think, for example, about the scale
and the size of the pictures so ask questions such as how many pictures do we want to gather on
a wall right? Do we want a very dense wall, many of them, or do we want to give them space.
Can we hang small pictures next to larger pictures? And, in addition to that, we also had to think about
spacing and about height so questions like those were constantly on our minds while hanging this room.
- So, I suppose that there must be sort of a link of maybe a visual thematic link between
the works of art so they might talk to each other somehow?
- Yeah so taking into account the kind of
unique space and location of Room 29, we really wanted to create a display
that cohered with the features of the room
so thinking about the three different bays we decided on a hang in which we drew out some of the,
kind of, key themes with the Venetian collection here at the Gallery
which is one of the richest outside of Italy.
So we begin in the first bay
in the 15th century looking at paintings by say Bellini and Mantegna and thinking about how
artists drew on nature and also the inspiration from Antiquity as principal sources of their painting.
We then moved to the second bay where we look at, for example, how there was a greater
emphasis placed on landscape in terms of evoking greater spiritual sentiment in pictures and also
the great importance of portraiture as a genre, in Venice at the time, for communicating the idea of
power, status and identity of Venice's citizens. And then in the final bay, in the third bay, we
moved to the later 16th century and really looking at how artists experimented with innovative brush
work and pigment to put their own sense of artistic self-expression particularly through
their own reincarnations of mythological subject matter and we wanted to also think about the way
that the bays allowed us to bring particular paintings together and these kind of multiple
viewpoints that we had with the particular locus of Room 29. It also allowed us to bring
out some interesting juxtapositions. Some of them more familiar, such as Mantegna and Bellini's
'Agony in the Garden's. Both, kind of, artists looking to each other
and Bellini inspired by his brother-in-law's earlier version.
And then some more unusual juxtapositions that you don't normally see in
the main galleries such as Tintoretto next to El Greco and we know, for example, that El Greco did spend
time in Venice where he was really inspired by the kind of scintillating brushwork and prismatic
colour palette of Tintoretto and when he moved to Spain, indeed, he hoped that this kind of Venetian
sympathy on his part would win him the patronage of King Philip II.
- Speaking of Philip II. So how did you display
two of the most iconic mythologies that Titian painted for Philip II?
- So you're talking about one of the great glories of the collection which is 'Diana and Acteon' and
'Diana and Callisto', painted by Titian in the late 1550s for King Philip II of Spain.
They were painted at the same time
on the easel simultaneously and conceived as a pair and indeed they've remained
together like for their entire history. The way that they're painted, the way the composition is
arranged with the landscape seeming to continue across from them and individual figures seeming
to rhyme, echo visually, suggests that they have to be hung quite close together. Then you get
that beautiful bow-like movement of the stream in the front and you get the hill ascending and then
descending in the back. We also decided to hang them quite low because these, although they're
very large pictures, they benefit from a certain intimacy.
When you get up close to them you are able better to appreciate them, I think,
in part because you're better able to appreciate Titian's expressive brush work
which is really part of the whole narrative we're telling in this gallery:
the development and innovations in painting and specifically the handling of the brush
and the use of colour in the period and so we want people to get up close but also because these
are pictures that really appeal to our emotional engagement and, by hanging them low, we enable
a more direct engagement with the protagonists in these pictures and to empathise with them.
Another question raised by the pictures is their original location. We don't know where they were
intended to be hung although it was somewhere in the palace in Toledo. However, Titian painted them
with the light falling from opposite directions: in 'Diana and Acteon' the light falls from
the left and in 'Diana and Callisto' the light falls from the right. Usually Titian was quite mindful of
the location to which his pictures were sent and where they were going to hang
so one assumes that this is intentional.
So what this might indicate is that, actually, they were in a very large room
with a window on either side but it's really, it's unclear. This is the way that makes sense
and with the beautiful natural light we have to coming into the gallery
it's a moot point.
- As morning and night transform the mood of the rooms in our homes,
lighting conditions influence our impression of a gallery display.
Last stop: a lighting design specialist.
- When we're in a gallery we may forget that the experience, the way we experience light, is
artificially controlled, but with daylight like this, it actually feels very natural.
It's sort of like a magic trick or not?
- Well that's the sort of art of it that we need to, kind of, balance the rooms
because we have lots of different factors to take into account for the visitor experience.
The ambition for the gallery was for it to feel daylit, completely daylit, and for these works
to be seen in daylight as they would have been, these Venetian works. However, of course we've
got to control the daylight because, in British weather, you know, we go from one extreme to the other:
at the moment we're in very, very bright sunlight which is lovely but actually creates
far too much exposure on the works. So we have to control that so we can be coming down from 6000 lux,
which is a really high level, to something which is deemed to be an appropriate exposure
for works of art that are on oils and then with artificial light we need to, kind of, blend in
so that there is artificial light but it shouldn't be seen as being
'oh this is a dramatic spotlight'.
The impression is that it's daylight and in this gallery we've been really testing
the colour temperatures so that that blends very well with the daylight so you're never seeing a
contrast between the peak level of daylight and then on a winter's afternoon it all feels quite
blended between the daylight and the artificial light. This is all controlled by a sensor on the
paintings themselves that then talks to the louvers, which are on the roof, and then that
also talks to the artificial lighting so between that it is a choreography really, an incremental
and very carefully judged dance between the artificial light and the daylight.
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- Creating a space to enjoy art is an art in itself. Many people work hard behind the scenes to make
the paintings shine on the walls, to make the best use of the natural and artificial light,
to make a museum room an exciting and inspiring place.
Walk with me through the National Gallery.
We're heading to the newly refurbished Room 29.
Savour the moment when your foot is on the door step.
Before your eyes, the floor defines the space that calls you in.
The barrel vaulting guides your steps through layers of history,
each painting opens up a view onto another world.
As you move forward you can feel a flutter of excitement,
a rush of emotions coming your way
and all of a sudden you feel tears running down your red eyes,
your heart is broken as if a sharp blade has come through it
or you feel joy fill up your soul as if you run into someone who you thought was lost forever.
And every time you walk through this room and feel moved, touched,
closer to these familiar or never-seen-before paintings,
their stories become your story
and you become part of the National Gallery.
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