Myra Hess Festival
A museum under a mountain: The National Gallery’s wartime home
Free
This talk will take place in the Pigott Theatre which is located at Level -1 of the Sainsbury Wing.
Places are limited and allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
About
Join us in the Pigott Theatre for an afternoon talk from Suzanne Bosman, author of ‘The National Gallery in Wartime’.
The story of the slate mine at Manod, near Blaenau Ffestiniog, as a hiding place for the National Gallery’s paintings during the Second World War is relatively well known. How they ended up there, however, is another story. This talk will tell how the paintings left London on the eve of war in conditions of total secrecy for various locations in Wales and how their eventual fate could have been very different.
Once Manod was adapted to receive the precious art works, not only did the slate mine provide a safe haven for the collection, but its unique configuration enabled the curators and scientists to prove that a stable and controlled environment was the optimal solution for the future care of works of art.
The talk will be illustrated with both historical archive material and recent photographs of the inside of the Manod slate mine.
Your speaker
Suzanne Bosman is the author of ‘The National Gallery in Wartime’. Her interest in the subject was sparked by seeing the amazing wartime press photos of the wartime storage. She has visited the mines at Manod in north Wales on several occasions and has appeared in various television programmes featuring the wartime story, most recently in Michael Portillo’s ‘Railway Journeys’, and the ‘One Show’ on the occasion of the National Gallery’s 200th birthday celebrations.