Section outline

  • Meeting Point: 

    Morning Session, 10AM Grad Centre 103

    Afternoon session, 1PM in front of the Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery (closest Tube stop: Charing Cross or Embankment). If you're facing the facade of the building in the picture above, with Trafalgar Square behind you, the Sainsbury Wing is to your left, under scaffolding. 

    • Essential Reading (ALL ATTACHED BELOW): 

      1. Tony Bennett, ‘The Exhibitionary Complex’, in The Birth of the Museum (London:  Routledge, 1995), pp. 59-88.
        • DEFINE: Michel Foucault's theory of panopticism. Google "Michel Foucault panopticon" 
        • QUESTION: What does Bennett mean by an "exhibitionary complex"?
      2. Hans Haacke, ‘Museums, Managers of Consciousness’ in Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum, ed. Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago (London: Routledge, 2004), 400–413.
        • QUESTION: According to Haacke, which people/groups have a political influence on museums? List them.
      3. Denise Scott Brown and Ellis Woodman, ‘In Defence of the Sainsbury Wing’, Building Design Online, 22 July 2011.
      4. Adam Nathaniel Furman, ‘Building of the Month: National Gallery Sainsbury Wing, London’, Twentieth Century Society, February 2016.
      5. John Hill, ‘Selldorf's Sainsbury Plans Approved,’ World-architects.com, December 2022.
        • QUESTIONS (after reading all three articles about the Sainsbury Wing):
          • How was Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates' design of the Sainsbury Wing a compromise? What views was it a compromise between? 
          • Why are the current plans to update the Wing contentious today? 


      Further Reading: 

      • Carol Duncan, ‘From the Princely Gallery to the Public Art Museum: The Louvre Museum and the National Gallery, London’ in Representing the Nation: A Reader (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 304-331.
      • Duncan Cameron, ‘The Museum, a Temple or Forum’, Journal of World History 14, no. 1, (1971): 191-202.
      • Paul Q. Hirst, ‘Power/knowledge – constructed space and the subject’, in Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago (eds.), Grasping the World; the Idea of the Museum (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 380-400. 
      • Charles Jencks, ‘National Gallery—Sainsbury Wing, Robert Venturi, David Vaughan and Charles Jencks—An Interview’, in Andreas Papadakis (ed.) Post-modern Triumphs in London (London: Architectural Design, 1991), 48–57.
      • Helen Rees Leahy, Museum Bodies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012).
      • Charles Saumarez Smith, ‘Architecture and the Museum’: the Seventh Reyner Banham Memorial Lecture, in Journal of Design History, 8, no 4, 1995, 243-56. 


    • Bennett - Exhibitionary Complex File
      41.7 MB
    • Haacke - Museums: Managers of Consciousness File
      18.6 MB
    • Scott Brown - In Defence of the Sainsbury Wing File
      4.5 MB
    • Furman - National Gallery Sainsbury Wing URL
    • Hill - Selldorf's Sainsbury Plans Approved URL