Condition checking
Every object photographed and condition-reported before it moved. Thirty-one were found with damage that is not in the 1998 audit, which put two weeks into the conservation queue before anything else could start.
Galleries 1–6 · rehang
Four thousand objects moved in eleven weeks, and the building stayed open for nine of them.
The rehang was funded on condition that the museum did not close. Everything below happened around visitors, which is why the difficult moves are all dated to a Monday.
Gallery 4 stripped
The first room to empty, because it holds the least light-sensitive material. The cases stayed where they were and were re-used; only the mounts were remade.
The Dutch pictures come down
Fourteen paintings off the wall in one day with the gallery closed. The largest needed the doorway architrave taken off, which had also been the case when it went up in 1974.
Rehang begins
Hanging started at the far wall so that visitors walked into finished rooms rather than into ladders. Labels went on last, once the final positions had survived a week of being looked at.
Open, with two rooms held back
Galleries 1, 2, 3 and 5 opened on the published date. Four and Six were held a further fortnight because the lighting track arrived cut to the wrong length.
Objects moved, by gallery4,180 in total
Gallery 1 940Gallery 2 620Gallery 3 780Gallery 4 1,010Gallery 5 480Gallery 6 350
Condition reports and the full object list sit on the collections database. The 1998 audit is superseded and is kept for reference only.