A surprising discovery at the National Gallery has brought to light a decades-old critique by one of its key benefactors. Contractors renovating Venturi Scott Brown’s Sainsbury Wing uncovered a hidden letter from 1990, in which John Sainsbury expressed strong disapproval of aspects of the architectural design.

A report in The Art Newspaper has revealed that the letter, buried within a column in the foyer of the Sainsbury Wing at London’s National Gallery, shows that John Sainsbury believed the architects had made a significant error. In the letter, typed on Sainsbury’s supermarket stationery, John Sainsbury criticised the American postmodernist architect Robert Venturi and his partner Denise Scott Brown for incorporating two large, non-structural columns in the foyer. Sainsbury described these columns as a “mistake” but expressed overall satisfaction with the architects’ design.

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