UK National Gallery sponsor John Sainsbury criticised the column during its construction in the 1990s. There was a surprise message hidden for the demolition crew which knocked down a column at London’s National Gallery this week. The workers found a message from the 90s that thanked the future builders for demolishing the “unnecessary” pillar.
Left in 1990, the note was by John Sainsbury, a British businessman and politician who was the president of the Sainsbury’s supermarket chain and a House of Lords peer before his death in 2022, aged 94. In 1985, Sainsbury and his two brothers funded the construction of a new wing in the National Gallery at a cost of around £50 million. The new wing was designed by American architect couple Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.
However, Sainsbury didn’t like the addition of two false columns in the gallery’s foyer that were purely aesthetical without structural purpose. The House of Lords Baron typed a letter hating on the columns and hid it inside one of them during construction. No one was aware of the note until its discovery in 2023 during reconstruction work.
Builders discovered it in a plastic folder as they removed the column. The full note reads: “To those who find this note. “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 .
