A New Front Door: The National Gallery's Sainsbury Wing Reopens

On 10 May 2025 — almost exactly a year after the National Gallery's 200th birthday — London's most famous picture house unveiled its reborn front door. The Sainsbury Wing, redesigned by Annabelle Selldorf's New York studio, reopened after a two-year, £85 million overhaul as the gallery's main entrance.

The old foyer was notoriously dark, low and cluttered with false columns. The new one is double-height, flooded with light, and opens onto a fresh public space on the edge of Trafalgar Square — with 60 per cent more room and, crucially, still free to enter.

There was a delicious twist during construction: workers found a note hidden in 1990 by the wing's donor, Lord Sainsbury, predicting that the gallery would 'live to regret' those fake columns. Thirty-five years on, they finally came down.

Image: “Trafalgar Square 360 Panorama Cropped Sky, London - Jun 2009” — Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.