Mark Glazebrook talks to Sandy Nairne, who explains why the NPG is part of the life of London
David Piper, director of the National Portrait Gallery 1964–67, was a brilliant historian and museum director who, while writing a book called The English Face, found that there’s no such thing. It vanished like the smile on Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire cat.
Piper himself was disinclined to mastermind the much-needed radical reform of a musty old institution — a challenge successfully embraced by his young colleague and successor, Roy Strong. Strong’s Cecil Beaton show, a first for photography, drew previously undreamed of crowds. Today, attendance figures have risen to 1.6 million per annum. In the wake of the far-reaching Strong revolution, the gallery has expanded with the help of generous donors such as Sir Christopher Ondaatje. It seems to have gone from strength to strength, most obviously in its improved display and lighting — under John Hayes, Charles Saumarez Smith and now Sandy Nairne, the director since 2002.
The current NPG chairman David Canadine, in his brief history of the gallery, mentions that Germaine Greer has ‘denounced it as a place of second-rate art — yet its purpose remains primarily historical…’.
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