National Gallery to let art lover stay the night among paintings
An art lover is to sleep in the National Gallery – the first time a member of the public has been allowed to stay there overnight.
One competition winner will occupy a bed placed near the paintings on the night of May 9, to mark the gallery's 200th anniversary and celebrate the re-opening of the Sainsbury Wing.
After a prize draw which runs until 6pm on April 28, the winner will be able to invite a guest for dinner and will be given a private viewing of an exhibition.
Their bed will be positioned in the area that connects the Sainsbury Wing, which has generally housed early Renaissance paintings, with the rest of the gallery.
The Sainsbury Wing is to reopen after a two-year refurbishment on May 10, with the earliest paintings in the collection returning to the gallery.
These include Piero della Francesca's Baptism of Christ, Jacopo di Cione's 14th-century work The San Pier Maggiore Altarpiece and Paolo Uccello's recently restored The Battle Of San Romano.
The winner and a guest will be given dinner for two at Locatelli, a restaurant set to open in the museum run by Giorgio Locatelli, the Michelin-starred chef.
After the guest has left, the winner will be given a private tour of CC Land: The Wonder of Art by a curator.
When the chosen art lover wakes on May 10, they will be given a breakfast hamper, and have time to explore before the official re-opening of the Sainsbury Wing at 10am.
CC Land: The Wonder of Art is a rehanging of works spanning the Western European tradition from the 13th to 20th centuries.
Paintings by Claude Monet, the French impressionist; Titian, the Italian Renaissance master; Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, the Flemish painters; Rembrandt van Rijn, the Dutch painter; and Thomas Gainsborough, the British landscape painter, will be kept in their own dedicated rooms.
Current subscribers to the gallery's newsletter will be automatically entered to the prize draw, and anyone else can visit nationalgallery.org.uk/subscribe/wake-up.
The gallery was opened overnight to the public during the Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers exhibition in January, which allowed slots to be booked from 9pm until 10am.
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