On the National Gallery in London

I would say, arguably the best museum in Europe to contemplate grand master paintings. The scale of the rooms, both in height and in plan, as well as the natural daylight, are almost perfect. Despite the ornementation of the spaces, the tired postures of the guards, the tired look of the velvet red walls, it remains the one place in the world where one can believe that the birth of the museum, the western 19th Century treasure house, was a well founded endeavor. The Louvre palatial rooms, are more like enfilades, for strolling. The National Gallery are proportioned for viewing, for the short hesitation to look at the art. For that, one never tires.
The format, the layouts and the proportions of other encyclopedic museums - the Metropolitan Museum in New York in particular - pale in comparison. And without all of the new tools at our disposal in designing new museums - the sophisticated sun-tracking models and computer aided simulations to create the optimal sky-lite galleries, from the great skylights of DeMenil Collection in Houston, to the more recent Baeyeler Museum in Basel, from the Kimbel Art Museum in Fort Worth to the Nasher Sculpture Court in Dallas (all, except for Louis Kahn's masterpiece, designed with the help of our friend Andy Sedgwick of Arup, London) - the NGA somehow still go it right: Just the correct dose of light levels, contrast, diffusion and an awareness of the time of day. It is in this light that Velaquez's Venus and Cupid, or Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors, enthralls the viewer, seen before being understood.

Now for the dated addition, by Venturi Scott Brown. One can be drawn to the light filled galleries perceived from the historic spaces, as another enfilade of rooms, and risk seeing more art in a post-modern installation. But for this visitor, I have always refrained - I just cannot bear the thought that Venturi did not live up to the lessons of the true NGA. So, the addition, has remained for me a theoretical expansion, seen only from the corner of your eye from Trafalgar; a period piece to be noted by an outdated architectural monograph. The more recent entrance reconfigurations, very sleek and minimal, equally do no justice to the NGA, nor do they set up an expectation for viewing the art. Lost opportunities in both design and visitor experience. Even worse to contemplate, as London is teaming with such creative force as to expect, even demand, otherwise. Nelson's Column did and got Rachel Whiteread's anemic, but beautiful clear, cast base.