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The National Gallery is currently in the middle of renovating its Sainsbury Wing, and a ‘time capsule’ has been found buried inside one of the building's columns. But it doesn’t contain treasures from the past or a warning for the future; instead it’s a letter from one of the wing’s main founders, John Sainsbury, complaining that the column itself is an architectural error and he wishes had never been built.
That’s right, it’s a whinge from the past. As The Art Newspaper reports, the letter, from 1990, finds Sainsbury criticising the architects (Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown), for placing two decorative false columns in the middle of the gallery’s foyer despite his objections. The architects (who Sainsbury was otherwise happy with) seemingly had no idea about the secret letter, because Sainsbury wandered into the space during construction and just popped the letter in the column without anyone else being made aware.
The perfectly succinct letter, on Sainsbury’s supermarket letterhead, reads: ‘If you have found this note you must be engaged in demolishing one of the false columns that have been placed in the foyer of the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery. I believe that the false columns are a mistake of the architect and that we would live to regret our accepting this detail of his design. Let it be know that one of the donors of this building is absolutely delighted that your generation has decided to dispense with the unnecessary columns’.
A rare example of beautiful, powerful, elegant, historical spite.
The National Gallery is still open, despite all the demolition, and has a free exhibition of Hockney and Piero Della Francesca.
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