National Gallery to Build £375m New Wing and Lift Ban on Post-1900 Art

Published on 15 September 2025

The National Gallery in London has announced one of the most transformative projects in its two-hundred-year history: a £375 million expansion that will add a new wing to the museum and, perhaps even more significantly, put an end to the institution’s century-old restriction on acquiring works created after 1900. The initiative, named Project Domani —“tomorrow” in Italian— represents both a physical and a symbolic opening of the Gallery, ensuring that it will be able to tell a broader and more continuous story of art as it enters the third decade of the twenty-first century.

 The Canaletto room. Until now the National has collected pre-20th century paintings because of an agreement with the Tate. Photograph: Guy Bell/Rex/Shutterstock

This unprecedented investment has been made possible thanks to two record donations of £150 million each, from Michael Moritz’s Crankstart Foundation and from the Hans and Julia Rausing Trust, together with a further £75 million provided by the National Gallery Trust and an anonymous group of benefactors. In total, the £375 million sum is one of the largest single financial commitments ever made to a cultural institution in the United Kingdom, allowing the National Gallery to embark on a project of a scale not seen since the opening of Tate Modern twenty-five years ago.

The new building will be situated behind the existing Sainsbury Wing, with construction scheduled to begin in the coming years. An international architectural competition has already been launched to select the winning design, and the results are expected to be announced in the near future. The opening of the new wing is projected for the early 2030s, marking a milestone in the Gallery’s history and in the cultural landscape of London as a whole. For Director Gabriele Finaldi, the ambition is clear: to expand and modernise the institution without losing the intimacy that has always characterised the visitor experience. Unlike the vast expanses of the Louvre in Paris or the Prado in Madrid, the National Gallery has prided itself on being “human in scale,” a place where it is still possible to see the entire collection in a single day.

Yet the architectural expansion, impressive as it is, may not be the most radical part of the announcement. Equally significant is the decision to lift the longstanding barrier that prevented the acquisition of works made after 1900. For more than a century, the National Gallery and Tate maintained an informal agreement: the former would collect works up to the nineteenth century, while the latter would focus on modern and contemporary art. This artificial division has often been criticised by scholars and curators, and Finaldi himself expressed frustration with it as early as 2016, calling it “slightly frustrating to reach 1900 and then stop.”

In practice, the line was never completely rigid. The National Gallery already owns more than forty works created after 1900, including paintings by Cézanne and Picasso. But until now, these were exceptions that did not alter the overall collecting policy. With Project Domani, the ban has been officially lifted, and the institution can finally expand into the twentieth century and beyond. This change will allow the Gallery to tell a richer and more continuous story of art, bridging the gap between the nineteenth-century masters and the innovations of modernism.

The policy shift also opens the door to addressing some of the collection’s most glaring imbalances. Out of more than 2,300 works held by the National Gallery, only twenty-seven are by women. By broadening its scope to include the twentieth century and later, the institution has the opportunity to collect works that can redress this inequality and bring greater diversity to its displays.

The reaction to the announcement has been overwhelmingly positive. Prime Minister Keir Starmer described the investment as “fantastic news for the National Gallery and the arts in general,” highlighting its potential to boost the economy, provide new educational opportunities for young people, and ensure access to great art for future generations. Maria Balshaw, director of Tate, officially welcomed the decision and expressed her intention to work closely with the National Gallery to “further the national collection as a whole.” Yet there is also recognition that the removal of the 1900 barrier will create a new dynamic between the two institutions, possibly increasing competition at a moment when Tate is facing declining visitor numbers and financial challenges.

The implications of Project Domani extend far beyond the walls of Trafalgar Square. For London, this initiative reinforces the city’s position as a global centre of art and culture, capable of drawing the world’s attention not only with blockbuster exhibitions but also with ambitious, long-term institutional investments. For the National Gallery, it is an assertion of relevance: an acknowledgment that to remain vital, a museum must not only conserve the past but also engage with the trajectory of art that followed. The dialogue between the National and the Tate will inevitably be reshaped, but this dialogue may also invigorate the broader ecosystem of British art institutions.

On a European scale, the move places the National Gallery in a different league. The Louvre and the Prado, with their vast historical collections, remain formidable counterparts, but their narratives are rooted primarily in the pre-modern. By contrast, the National Gallery is positioning itself to present a more seamless story of art that does not end abruptly at the turn of the twentieth century. This approach aligns it more closely with institutions such as the Musée d’Orsay in Paris or the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, which bridge the gap between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries.

There are also market implications. The decision to acquire twentieth-century works will inevitably bring the National Gallery into direct competition with private collectors and other institutions seeking masterpieces of modernism. In a climate where prices for canonical twentieth-century works continue to soar, the Gallery’s acquisitions will be closely watched by dealers, auction houses and collectors alike. The prestige of the National Gallery, combined with its new financial resources, could shift the balance of influence in the art market, at least in terms of what enters the canon of public collections.

Ultimately, Project Domani is not merely a matter of bricks and mortar, nor simply a curatorial adjustment to the calendar of art history. It is a redefinition of what the National Gallery can and should be in the twenty-first century. The early 2030s may still seem distant, but when the new wing opens, the institution will stand as something more than a repository of the Old Masters. It will be a place where the Renaissance converses with modernism, where Caravaggio shares space with Picasso, and where future generations can experience a fuller, richer story of art.

In this sense, the future of the National Gallery is not only about tomorrow, but about continuity — a bridge between past, present and future, grounded in tradition yet open to transformation. Project Domani is both a promise and a challenge, and its impact will reverberate across the art world for decades to come.