Faces in Focus: Equipping the National Portrait Gallery's New Conservation Laboratory for Photography, Works on Paper and Miniatures

The National Portrait Gallery was founded in 1856 with the aim of promoting through the medium of portraiture the appreciation and understanding of the people who have made and are making British history and culture, and of promoting the appreciation and understanding of portraiture in all media. This specialised focus has shaped the development of the institution and its collection, and the Gallery now holds the largest collection of portraits in the world. An Independent Research Organisation (IRO), the Gallery's creative research culture has enabled the collections to be used to examine questions of identity, history, achievement, citizenship, and artistic methods and materials, working with partners across the GLAM and HEI sectors. These partnerships include people from all stages of their research careers, ranging from Professors to student groups that are invited for teaching sessions into the Gallery's research spaces and the Collaborative Doctoral Studentships that Gallery staff develop and co-supervise. Partners also regularly include creative practitioners, such as designers, developers and writers, as well as the artists with whom the Gallery works through its commissioning programme and the annual international portrait competitions. Taken together, these amplify the Gallery's impact on the UK's cultural economy far beyond the footprint of the Gallery's London site, online presence, and the National and International programme.

Within the Gallery's holdings, three areas of the Collection are comparatively understudied and therefore investment in research capability would offer a particular opportunity: the Photographs collection of more than 250,000 works; the nearly 100,000 works on paper held within the Primary, Reference and Archive collections; and the more than 2,500 Miniatures. Currently these can only be examined by researchers in the shared spaces of the Painting Conservation Studio, the Framing Studio or the Public Study Room of the Library and Archive. Lack of specialised equipment and a dedicated space has meant that technical analysis and conservation have had to be outsourced to external contractors, with recent projects ranging from the analysis of negatives in order to inform decisions for their safe storage and long-term care, to the treatment of a number of Lucian Freud's sketchbooks, which the artist bequeathed to the Gallery. The costs associated with undertaking research in this way, and the complexity of moving works for analysis, have undeniably restricted the Gallery's research capacity in relation to these internationally significant collections.

However, the Gallery's transformative Inspiring People project, due for completion in 2023, has instigated a step-change in relation to the display and management of these collections. More works have been integrated into the new displays, and specialised gallery spaces have been created to explore the 'Making' of Photographs, Prints, Drawings and Miniatures. At the same time, the building project has offered the opportunity to create a dedicated Conservation Laboratory for Photographs, Works on Paper and Miniatures for the first time, and to refurbish the Negative Store. It is within this context that the Gallery seeks funding to purchase analytical equipment that will optimise the Gallery's research capability in relation to these specialist collections.

The purchase of FTIR, a Spectrophotometer, a Digital Binocular Microscope, a 3D Microscope and a Portable Extraction Unit would enable the Gallery to develop its in-house expertise in the materials and techniques of Photographs, Negatives, Works on Paper and Miniatures, and thereby to instigate and support new research projects. Funding from CResCa would be complemented by the Gallery's commitment to investment in staff capacity through the recruitment of specialist conservators in Works on Paper and Photography in core staff for the first time.