Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold. Concrete, others add, is best poured above five degrees celsius. And when architects at the National Gallery found a triumphant note from Lord John Sainsbury upon demolishing the building’s controversial concrete pillars, a quarter-century wrongdoing was vindicated.
The peer’s missive was discovered buried within the pillars adorning the Sainsbury wing, which his family funded in 1991. And, it transpires, the man himself was most aggrieved by their bulwark presence. While his protests must have been overruled when Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown designed the room, the supermarket magnate set in motion a practical joke, the punchline of which has only just been revealed.
Hidden deep within the concrete, Lord Sainsbury had left a note, to be read only upon the tearing down of the ‘unnecessary columns, thanking whoever was responsible for finally confirming his aesthetic misgivings. And when Gabriele Finaldi, the current director of the gallery, made the order, the Lord’s views were finally unearthed.
‘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,’ the letter reads.’I believe that the false columns are a mistake of the architect and that we would live to regret our accepting of this detail of his design.
‘Let it be known that one of the donors of this building is absolutely delighted that your generation has decided to dispense with the unnecessary columns.’
