The Ondaatje Wing of the National Portrait Gallery creates a new heart to the gallery, increases the public and exhibition space by 50 per cent and upgrades visitor facilities. It provides a dramatic central hall, lecture theatre, IT gallery and two new exhibition spaces: the Balcony Gallery, accommodating the expanding twentieth-century collection; and the Tudor Gallery, with the Ditchley portrait of Elizabeth I and the collection of Holbein Portraits.
Above, the rooftop restaurant gives new views out over Nelson’s Column and Whitehall.
At the time, only one in five visitors made their way to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century galleries on the upper floors. To create the space for a new wing, there should be an exchange of property between the National Gallery and the NPG. By giving up those galleries running along St Martin’s Place to the National Gallery, in return for control of the once dingy service yard separating the two institutions, the NPG gained space for a triple-height hall that provides a new circulation and focal point to the museum.
White virtually invisible on the outside, internally the new wing is a radical addition that creates a new sense of clarity for visitors. It encourages them to start in the upper galleries, where the earliest paintings are displayed, and view the entire collection as they work their way down to the ground floor.
Daylight is drawn deep into this triple-height space via south-facing clerestory glazing running its full length. The upper floors are on a single column, which support a truss in the wall of the top gallery. Visitors can take the 23 metre-long escalator up to the second floor and the new Tudor Gallery.
The Balcony Gallery below is suspended on cables from the Tudor Gallery.
Significant restoration work has also been undertaken. The original double-height staircase landing has been reinstated, removing a mezzanine inserted in the ’70s, and the entrance lobby and upper galleries have been refurbished in keeping with the original scheme.