Lord Sainsbury note criticizing National Gallery wing found by construction workers
British grocery store magnate Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover hid a critical note inside a column at the National Gallery's Sainsbury Wing.
LONDON — What does a billionaire philanthropist do when the art gallery he is sponsoring builds some pillars he doesn’t like? The answer, it turns out, is to have the last say from beyond the grave almost a quarter of a century later.
In the 1980s, British grocery store magnate Lord John Sainsbury, Baron of Preston Candover, spent tens of millions funding a new wing of London’s National Gallery. He did not like one aspect of the design, however: two nonstructural, false columns in the building’s lobby.
Whereas a pushy American tycoon might have dug their heels in, Sainsbury, of the giant British superstore chain Sainsbury's, took the kind of audacious I-told-you-so approach that perhaps only a politely outraged Brit could pull off.
It was revealed this week that, during a refurbishment, construction workers demolishing the columns found a note Sainsbury had hidden inside one of them while it was being built in 1990.
“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,” read the missive, printed on official Sainsbury's superstore letterhead paper. “I BELIEVE THAT THE FALSE COLUMNS ARE A MISTAKE OF THE ARCHITECT AND THAT WE WOULD LIVE TO REGRET OUR ACCEPTING THIS DETAIL OF HIS DESIGN.”
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