The National Portrait Gallery reopened following a three-year £41 million regeneration project, showcasing its new identity, wayfinding system and interpretation design and gallery rehang.
The new identity of the museum was created by Edit Brand Studio’s, while Nissen Richards undertook the interpretation design, Jamie Fobert Architects carried out the architectural changes and Holmes Wood designed the wayfinding system.
Visitors notice the changes from the outset with the new Ross Place entrance and forecourt, which reorients the building and allows more light in. The three windows on the façade have been transformed into doorways, with doors created by artist Tracy Emin, featuring 45 low-relief bronze panels that represent women through time.
The gallery rehang responds to audience feedback that called for a more “inclusive and dynamic picture of the people who have contributed to the history of the United Kingdom”, the National Portrait Gallery says. It has increased the proportion of portraits of women in the 20th and 21st-century galleries from 35% to 48%, and in addition, 11% of all of the works on display are now of ethnic minority sitters, up from 3% before the regeneration, according to the Gallery.
An additional three-year project, Reframing Narratives: Women in Portraiture, is a collaboration with Chanel Culture Fund, which also seeks to increase representation in the National Portrait Gallery.
New audio-visual elements developed by software company NGX AV also seek to fill in contextual gaps where representation cannot be achieved through the portraits alone. While they provide opportunities “to understand more about the context of a key work or hear a behind the scenes story”, Nissen Richards director Pippa Nissen says she was keen to make sure the AV elements were “really integrated with the overall gallery furniture”, so the studio opted to use the same “patinated metal”.
