Workers find mysterious letter hidden in a concrete column at the National Gallery in London

When workers demolished two non-load-bearing columns near London National Gallerythey found a plastic folder hidden in the concrete. Inside was a letter, addressed ‘to those who find this note’.

The letter was neatly typed on stationery belonging to John Sainsbury, a member of the organization of the same name British supermarket dynasty. In 1990, Sainsbury and his two brothers financed a wing of the National Gallery. The letter read:

If you’ve found this note, you’re probably demolishing one of the false columns installed in the foyer of the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery. I believe that the false columns are a mistake by the architect and that we would regret accepting 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 do away with the unnecessary columns.

The letter was dated July 26, 1990, right around the time the column was said to have been built. It remained undisturbed for more than three decades, until crews found it during renovation work in 2023. The discovery was first reported this week by the Art newspaperby Martin Bailey.

The Sainsbury Wing‘s appearance has always been controversial. When the original designs were released in the 1980s, Charles III (then Prince of Wales) rose to fame belittled them like a “monstrous carbuncle on the face of a beloved and elegant friend.” Those plans were abandoned and the museum turned instead to a pair of American architects, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.

Sainsbury was delighted with their work, with one exception: he disliked a pair of non-load-bearing pillars in the gallery’s ground floor foyer.

The architects designed the foyer as the crypt of a church. The idea was that visitors would enter the gallery through a dark, confined space and find their way to a staircase; they then ended up in brightly lit galleries full of beautiful works of art from the Renaissance.

“The crypt was a way of entering that prepared your eyes by running your vision through the order of what you saw,” says Scott Brown. Art newspaper. “The columns direct your movement through the dark, low-ceilinged crypt to the light-filled staircase.”

But Sainsbury didn’t see it that way.

“Although the architects were very enthusiastic about the sense of weight the columns gave to the ground floor, he was much more interested in the efficient use of space, clear sight lines and maximizing floor areas,” says Sainsbury’s son Mark. BBC Radio 4‘s Mishal Husain. “He wasn’t bothered by the architectural conceit and saw it as a kind of unnecessary architectural affectation.”

Even when Sainsbury argued with the architects, his son imagines he was ‘not keen to make a public row about it either’. Then Sainsbury’s brother, Mark’s uncle, came to a compromise: the columns would remain standing and Sainsbury’s letter would be preserved inside.

The plan was not a secret to everyone – Sainsbury did not tiptoe onto the property and secretly hide the note – but it was known only to a small circle. The idea was that it would become public if the columns were ever demolished.

That fateful day came last year, when the gallery embarked on an £85 million renovation. These changes include opening up the foyer space to accommodate larger crowds as visitor numbers are much higher than in the 1980s and 1990s, the London newspaper said. Times‘Emma Yeomans. As part of this effort, gallery director Gabriele Finaldi ordered the crew to demolish the columns, after which they found the letter.

Sainsbury died in 2022 at the age of 94. But his widow, Anya, donned a high-vis vest and hard hat so gallery officials could show her where the letter was discovered.

“I was so happy that John’s letter was rediscovered after all these years,” she says Art newspaper. “I think he would be relieved and happy with the gallery’s new plans and the extra space they create.”

The note is free of the ill-fated column and is now housed in the gallery’s archives. Mark tells BBC Radio 4 that his father would be happy, but he wouldn’t be gloating either. He would express his triumph in a more subtle way.

“He was never one to say, ‘I told you so,’” Mark adds, “but he raised an eyebrow and a wry smile that we all eventually saw the significance of.”