The National Galleries of Scotland said the new spaces will be home to key works from the nation’s historic Scottish art collection, offering more than double the physical display space and transforming the visitor experience. 

New light-filled spaces will showcase Scotland’s historic art in ten new rooms. The new fully accessible galleries will be entered directly from the adjoining East Princes Street Gardens. Large windows will offer views over the city, enticing visitors to come in and discover the work of pioneering Scottish artists such as William McTaggart, Anne Redpath, Phoebe Anna Traquair, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow Boys.

New ways of looking at Scotland’s built and natural environments will be on offer, with early photographs of Scotland’s capital city shown in the same spaces as grand paintings of majestic Highland landscapes. Reimagined displays of drawings and sketches will celebrate artists such as Glasgow Style pioneer Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh and David Allan, whose depictions of ‘Edinburgh Characters’ will allow visitors to get up close to street life in the Scottish capital in the late eighteenth century.

Director-General of the National Galleries of Scotland, Sir John Leighton, said: “This project has been driven by an ambition to transform the experience of visiting the National and to show the extraordinary collections of Scottish art with pride in beautiful, new, light-filled spaces. We believe that we have created a National Gallery that is more open, engaging and inviting than ever before.

“Whether immersing themselves in the highly Romantic paintings of the Scottish Highlands, taking part in a family day or just enjoying the views, all are welcome to come and discover. We are incredibly grateful to all our funders including the Scottish Government, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, key trusts and foundations, our Patrons, American Patrons and Friends as well as the many private individuals and donors who have been so generous in supporting this project.”

Culture minister Christina McKelvie said: “The National Galleries of Scotland has the world’s finest collection of Scottish Art and I’m delighted that the new galleries will now have space to show this off to a wide national and international public. We have supported this redevelopment project from the start with a significant contribution of £15.25 million and it’s wonderful to see this will open soon so the public can enjoy these new galleries.”

However, the highly complex project was not without its challenges, working within the constraints of a World Heritage site, above railways tunnels and excavating beneath a category-A listed building.

The £38.62 million redevelopment, which set out with an original £16.8m budget, was delayed for “several months” in March 2017 after the National Galleries of Scotland announced that some aspects of the construction, namely the proposal to build out by an additional five metres into East Princes Street Gardens, were more complex and expensive than originally anticipated.

A revised scheme for the development unveiled two months later scrapped the extension into East Princes Street Gardens and pushed back the entire project a year for further design work.

The first phase of the Scottish National Gallery Project was completed successfully in 2019. This included a new entrance area in East Princes Street Gardens, a new café, a refurbished restaurant and shop, an extensive sandstone terrace, and new landscaping and paths to improve access to the gardens and the Galleries.

In February 2020, the National Galleries of Scotland reported the discovery of unexpected defects when the 1970s building was fully stripped back to its core concrete structure, pushing the expected completion date to “the end of 2021”. These included multiple instances of undocumented asbestos deposits which required safe removal; damp and water ingress issues which substantially changed the extent of the waterproofing requirements and undocumented obstructions including remnants from previous developments, which added significant complexity to the building work.

Deeply buried layers of dense concrete had to be extracted, impacting on the sequencing of the works while managing the unique complexity of the engineering works. All these challenges were successfully overcome to create generous, high-quality new spaces for the world’s most important collection of historic Scottish art.

The combined stopping of works due to the lockdown, along with the complex and changing nature of the construction requirements, led the organisation to further revise the project timescales.

The project has been funded by major contributions from the Scottish Government (£15.25m) and The National Lottery Heritage Fund (£6.89m). An extremely successful fundraising campaign raised over £16m thanks to an extraordinarily generous response in donations from trusts, foundations, Patrons, the National Galleries of Scotland’s Friends organisation, American Patrons and a wide range of private individuals.

Commenting on the success of the campaign, Sir John Leighton, said: “We are thrilled to report on the success of our fundraising campaign for this project. The strong and unwavering backing from Scottish Government and from The National Lottery Heritage Fund provided a really robust platform for our fundraising efforts and we were delighted by the generous response to this project by so many trusts, foundations and private individuals. We are extremely grateful to all our funders for their incredible support.”

While construction has been ongoing, a wide programme of engagement and outreach for the project has also been delivered. This has included activities in schools from Fife to Orkney and West Lothian, social groups for older people experiencing loneliness in Edinburgh, and youth groups in the Borders.

This programme of activity will continue to engage with communities after the opening. A series of engaging videos about star works of art from the Scottish collection has also been produced, and a painstaking monumental conservation project gripped online audiences during lockdown.

Graphics by Hoskins Architects and Metaphor