Um, So, Thumbs Down, Then?

Britain’s National Portrait Gallery has been getting an architectural overhaul lately, and the results do not appear to have pleased Richard Dorment. “Architects hate art. If you let them loose near a museum or gallery, you have to watch their every move, because they will do their best to leave their own galumphing paw prints all over the place, and in the process stamp on the works of art. For several months now I’ve been hearing angry denunciations of the National Portrait Gallery’s renovation of its once glorious Regency Galleries, but only last week, when I saw them for myself, did I register the full horror of what has happened there.”