As one who has very recently redecorated a flat and now experiences an acute reluctance to start banging nails into the walls from which to hang pictures, this correspondent can only begin to imagine how staff at the extensively remodelled Scottish National Portrait Gallery (SNPG) must feel.
This morning they unveiled to the Press a building transformed by structural reorganisation and the inflooding of natural light. The result is spacious, flexible and welcoming – a far cry from the somewhat dingy and congested confines many remember prior to the building's closure for renovation in 2009 (Breaking news 26.11.09).
The £17.6m project to bring the SNPG into the 21st century has entered its second phase, with capital costs met and fundraising efforts now focusing on paying for the exhibitions and outreach projects which will be based here. Between now and the Gallery's return to the Scottish public on 30 November, staff will concentrate on the huge enterprise of carefully arranging and re-installing the internationally renowned collection.
[img_assist|nid=1777|title=|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=200]Remarkably, architects Page\Park have retained the best of Rowand Anderson's 1885 design – the first purpose-built portrait gallery in the world – whilst enlarging and reimagining the space available for exhibitions. Some features, like the new glass-box lift and the 'floating' meeting-room, are strikingly modern; others, such as the furniture, display cabinets, radiators, and oak and pine floors are solidly Victorian. Some works will be hung traditionally on walls, others will be mounted on 'temporary' panels matching in feel the 'industrial' girders of the original building. Much thought has gone into highlighting the building's dramatic arcades of arches, both as places in which to show paintings and as clearly understandable routeways
[img_assist|nid=1778|title=|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=200|height=150]John Leighton, Director-General of the National Galleries of Scotland describes himself as 'absolutely thrilled' with the result – a combination of 'tactful and sympathetic interventions which have reinvogorated and enhanced' the institution.
The new building is in some ways a physical expression of the Gallery's intellectual development. What began as an 18th-century style 'Caledonian temple of fame' grew into a '19th-century parade of civic virtues'. Now – with astonishingly good timing, given recent political developments – it is to reinvent itself as a place in which 21st-century issues of Scotland's identity and place in the world can be examined.
[img_assist|nid=1779|title=|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=117|height=200]'It will comprise individual and collective Scottish stories,' says James Holloway, SNPG Director (pictured top-right), 'forming a fascinating and multi-layered portrait of the nation.'
Subtle use of mezzanine floors, the rearrangement, reconnection and occasional bashing-together of rooms, and – for the first time – dedicating the whole internal space exclusively to portraiture will expand the Gallery's space by about 50 per cent, and also its investigative reach. Seventeen new exhibitions will run simultaneously when the SNPG reopens: major ones remaining in situ for 4 years or more, smaller ones for between 6 and 12 months. Also for the first time, a dedicated photography gallery is to open, starting with an exhibition examining the influence of Romanticism in Scottish work from the 1840s to the present day.
[img_assist|nid=1780|title=|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=200]Photographs will, however, complement and help explain many other exhibitions throughout the building, on topics as varied as Scottish science (including the death-mask of Dolly the Sheep), sport, tartan ('featuring lots of men dressed to do beastly things to animals'), Scotland's role in the (First World) War at Sea, and Scotland as a place of emigration and immigration.
SNPG's educational role will also be improved, with greater facilities for school parties and a range of fantastic new resources on the ground floor.
Meanwhile, and apparently quite high on the list of public concerns about the project, the much-loved Gallery scones will again go on sale, this time in an area twice as large and enlivened by a work donated by John Bellany.
Much remains to be done before 30 November, but the staff's enthusiasm and confidence about the project are certainly inspiring. On-schedule and on-budget, what Holloway describes as 'an album of Scottish DNA' will surely be a source of national pride and excitement ... and it's right on Broughton's doorstep. AM
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