JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Getting the last word can be ever so sweet. In the case of a wealthy donor to the U.K.'s National Gallery, it took more than three decades. From London, NPR's Lauren Frayer reports.
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UNIDENTIFIED NEWSCASTER: Bright lights in Trafalgar Square.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: London's National Gallery, founded 200 years ago, towers over Trafalgar Square. By the 1980s, though, it was so full of Monets, Picassos and Rembrandts that a new wing was planned, expanding west into an area bombed in the blitz. Modern designs were floated. In a 1984 speech, then-Prince Charles gave his now-famous verdict...
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KING CHARLES III: Seems to me like a monstrous carbuncle.
FRAYER: ...Calling it a monstrous carbuncle. The museum ended up going with a different design, funded by the Sainsbury family. And in 1991, his mom, Queen Elizabeth, inaugurated the new wing.
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FRAYER: But John Sainsbury, also known as the Right Honorable Baron Sainsbury of Preston Candover - Lord Sainsbury for short - still didn't like it - specifically, two pillars in the foyer. They were ornamental, not structural.
MARK SAINSBURY: I just think it was a look that my father just didn't quite get the point of.
FRAYER: That's Lord Sainsbury's son, Mark Sainsbury, on the BBC this week after a letter from his father was found inside one of those pillars wrapped in plastic. The donor apparently dropped it into wet concrete in 1990, to be found only whenever those wretched columns were taken down, which ended up happening this past winter during another renovation. The letter is typewritten in all caps, and Mark Sainsbury reads it.
SAINSBURY: Yes. I mean, yeah, it's the last paragraph. (Reading) Let it be known that one of the donors of this building is absolutely delighted that your generation has decided to dispense with the unnecessary columns.
FRAYER: Lord Sainsbury died two years ago, aged 94. His son says his father was never one to say I told you so, but his letter has been placed in the museum's archives for safe keeping forever.
Lauren Frayer, NPR News, London.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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