NGS announces opening date for new Scottish galleries
The National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) has announced that its much-delayed Scottish galleries will open to the public in Edinburgh on 30 September.
NGS has spent £38.62m creating 10 new galleries and a range of other facilities for visitors at the National (formerly known as the Scottish National Gallery). The project was first announced in 2014 and was going to cost £15.3m and take four years to complete, with costs later rising to £22m.
An NGS statement said: “The construction of the new galleries was one of the most complex engineering projects undertaken in a heritage building in Scotland; working within the constraints of a World Heritage site, above railways tunnels and excavating beneath a category-A listed building.
“Several issues were discovered when the 1970s building was fully stripped back to its core concrete structure. These included multiple instances of undocumented asbestos deposits, which required safe removal; damp and water ingress issues, which substantially changed the extent of the waterproofing requirements; and undocumented obstructions including remnants from previous developments, which added significant complexity to the building work. Deeply buried layers of dense concrete had to be extracted, impacting on the sequencing of the works while managing the unique complexity of the engineering works.”
The new galleries will display more than 130 items from Scotland’s historic art collection, including works by William McTaggart, Anne Redpath, Phoebe Anna Traquair, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow Boys.
NGS director-general John Leighton said: “This project has been driven by an ambition to transform the experience of visiting the National and to show the extraordinary collections of Scottish art with pride in beautiful, new, light-filled spaces. We believe that we have created a national gallery that is more open, engaging and inviting than ever before.”
NGS said the galleries are fully accessible and will be free to enter.
Funding for the £38.62m project came from the Scottish government (£15.25m) and the National Lottery Heritage Fund (£6.89m), with more than £16m coming from donations from trusts, foundations, patrons, NGS’s Friends organisation, American Patrons and private individuals.
“We are thrilled to report on the success of our fundraising campaign for this project,” Leighton said. “The strong and unwavering backing from Scottish government and from the National Lottery Heritage Fund provided a really robust platform for our fundraising efforts and we were delighted by the generous response to this project by so many trusts, foundations and private individuals. We are extremely grateful to all our funders for their incredible support.”
Construction began in October 2018, with the first phase of the project completed in 2019. This included a new entrance area in East Princes Street Gardens, a new cafe, refurbished restaurant and shop, a terrace, and new landscaping and paths to improve access to the gardens and the galleries.
The new galleries at the National were designed by Hoskins Architects, with exhibition design by Metaphor.