The National Portrait Gallery is on tour (but it'll cost you more up north)

Times

05-05-2025

Taking over a failing institution is obviously challenging. But taking over one that's riding the crest of a wave must be daunting too. How do you make your mark without making it worse?
So far, after six months as director of the National Portrait Gallery, Victoria Siddall hasn't put an elegant shoe wrong. Her predecessor, Nicholas Cullinan, departed to run the British Museum after masterminding a £41 million revamp that was acclaimed by nearly everyone. Siddall, 47, was appointed after directing and expanding the fashionable art fair Frieze for more than a decade, but with no experience of managing a publicly funded arts organisation. 'The mindset is very different,' she admits.
Yet already she has conjured up the one essential thing the NPG regularly needs: a photocall at the gallery with its royal patron, the Princess of Wales, surrounded by lots of tiny tots. And now she has launched two initiatives signalling a new way forward for the NPG.
One, opening at MediaCity in Salford, is billed as 'the first immersive art experience of a UK national collection'. Called Stories — Brought to Life, it's a walk-in-and-gawp show of digital projections. Based on 19 portraits from the NPG collection, ranging from Elizabeth I, Darwin and Shakespeare to such mandatory modern cultural icons as Amy Winehouse and Grayson Perry, it surrounds visitors with sound and visuals, whisking through the lives of the chosen subjects.
A portrait of Amy Winehouse at Stories — Brought to Life
DAVID PARRY
A portrait of Mary Seacole at Stories – Brought to Life
DAVID PARRY
It has been put together by the NPG in association with Frameless, a commercial company specialising in immersive art experiences. Who approached whom? Siddall seems surprised by the question. 'Work has been going on for some years and predates me,' she replies. 'There was a desire on the part of the NPG to look at innovative technologies and how these could be harnessed to share the collection in new ways. Frameless has been doing this successfully for years.'
So who chose which portraits to use? 'That's another great question,' Siddall replies, without answering it. 'The show covers a wonderful range of people and beautifully illustrates the diversity of voices who've made up UK history.'
And the point of the project is? 'The challenge of being a national museum in one building in one city is how you can be truly national and show the collection all over the country,' she says. 'Because, of course, the collection is owned by everybody. So the main driver is this desire to take the collection out and reach new audiences in this very different new format.'
But isn't there a flaw in this thinking? People who are able to visit the NPG in London get free admission. That's very much not the case with Stories — Brought to Life, which runs in Salford all summer before touring other UK venues. In fact the ticket prices seem steep, especially as the show is over in 45 minutes.
'They are very much in line with other immersive experiences,' Siddall replies. 'We want everybody to be able to see this.'
Really? When I went online to book for this weekend I found adult (over-16) tickets priced at £29.95, children's tickets at £19.95, and the family ticket (two adults, two children) a hefty £80. It's not exactly flinging open the doors to the poor of Salford and Manchester, is it?
'Yes, at peak times it will be more expensive,' Siddall concedes, 'but there's quite a range of pricing there for people to work with.' How is the ticket revenue being divided between the NPG and Frameless? 'We have an arrangement with Frameless that I can't delve into,' she says.
She points out that this project is not the only way in which the NPG will reach out to the country in the coming year. J oshua Reynolds's magnificent Portrait of Mai, which the NPG helped to buy for a jaw-dropping £50 million in a unique 50/50 sharing deal with the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, embarks this month on a national tour — Bradford (for its City of Culture year), Cambridge and Plymouth — with what Siddall describes as a 'fantastic learning and engagement programme built round it'.
Her other recent initiative demonstrates how important it now is for directors of arts institutions to have friends in wealthy places — something that Siddall undoubtedly put into practice during her time at Frieze and, before that, the auction house Christies. She has persuaded Anastasia and Igor Bukhman — Russian-born billionaires living in London with Israeli passports and a fortune made from an online gaming business — to donate £1 million so that that NPG can start a new fund, Collecting the Now, to buy 'major contemporary artworks'. It will run for three years and the first two artworks have already been acquired: a self-portrait by Sonia Boyce, and a satirically embellished portrait bust of Edward VII by Hew Locke.
'It's particularly important for museums like the NPG to collect works by living artists, reflecting our times, before they become too expensive,' Siddall says. 'This fund will enable us to think more strategically and be more nimble about acquisitions. Making quick decisions is sometimes essential when buying contemporary art.'
Also essential, one imagines, is the knack of wooing art-loving, m ega-rich individuals like the Bukhmans, especially at a time when (if you believe the newspapers) thousands of multimillionaires are quitting Britain for less taxing regimes. 'Oh, there are still a few around,' Siddall says with a laugh. 'But yes, that's really critical. I hope they [the Bukhmans] will be an inspiration to others. We have such high ambitions for the NPG. There are so many things we would love to do, whether it's learning programmes, exhibitions, building the collection or taking shows round the country. But we do need financial stability and donors to achieve those.'
• Nicholas Cullinan, British Museum boss: 'I won't conform to political agendas'
It could be that Siddall has a self-inflicted problem, however, when it comes to attracting potential sponsors. Five years ago she co-founded Gallery Climate Coalition, committing all its member galleries to a 50 per cent reduction in their carbon emissions by 2030. The following years she raised over £5 million for the environmental charity ClientEarth by persuading artists to donate works. She then founded Murmur to champion the idea that 'the arts industries have the potential to ignite a critical mass of action on the climate crisis and to be leaders on this vital issue'. Unsurprisingly the anti-oil pressure group Culture Unstained, which ferociously denounces sponsorships such as BP's £50 million to the British Museum, announced that it was 'encouraging' to see Siddall appointed to the NPG. Were the eco-warriors right to be encouraged?
A portrait of Malala Yousafzai at Stories – Brought to Life
DAVID PARRY
A portrait of Emmeline Pankhurst at Stories – Brought to Life
DAVID PARRY
'Like many of us, I care about the future of the planet,' Siddall replies, 'and it's right that we look at the sustainability of our own building. But in terms of support from sponsors for institutions, it's vital to be able to achieve what we want to do, and I'm very grateful for the corporate partners that we do have.'
What would she do if she was offered sponsorship by, say, Baillie Gifford, the investment giant that has tiny links to fossil-fuel companies yet was dumped as a sponsor by various literary festivals? 'It's hard for me to comment because it's another organisation and I wasn't involved,' she replies. 'But I would definitely encourage corporates and individuals to think about how they can help our sector continue to flourish.'
Should the UK's national museums still have free admission? No other country does it. 'Yes, it creates this incredibly democratic access to culture,' Siddall replies. OK, what about London imposing a hotel or city tax on visitors, to be spent on culture? At least tourists would then be contributing something towards the huge cost of running the museums they are free to enjoy. 'I'm sure those conversations are underway,' she says.
She is clearly already skilled in the corporate art of giving absolutely nothing away. She will go far.
Stories — Brought to Life is at MediaCity, Salford Quays, from May 2 to Aug 31, npgunframed.com. thetimes.com/timesplus