ABSTRACT
The Two World Wars provoked a major disruption across museums in Britain and the rest of Europe, given the unprecedented level of destruction, which had caused the evacuation of collections and the closure of many museums. In the midst of this zeal to renovate the museum, the curatorial logics that underpinned the reconstruction of the National Gallery in the immediate post-war years also sought to reconfigure, if only temporarily, the traditional hang of the collection and develop avowedly experimental and popularising displays. In the absence of photographic evidence, it is the minutes of board meetings, correspondence, the director’s writings, reports, and letters from visitors in the National Gallery Archive that provide an invaluable source for ‘visualising’ the experimental rehang of 1946. Evidence suggests however that some members of the public found this reinterpretation of the displays disorienting, uninformative, or discouraging, as is clear from letters written by several visitors.
