Front Row

The National Gallery opened its doors on 10th May 1824. The public could view 38 paintings, free. Now there are more than 2,300, including many masterpieces of European art by geniuses such as Rembrandt, Turner and Van Gogh. It is still free. The gallery's director, Gabriele Finaldi, guides Samira Ahmed through the collection. Artists Barbara Walker, Bob and Roberta Smith and Celine Condorelli, last year's artist-in-residence , choose paintings from the collection that are important to them, as does the critic Louisa Buck. The Sainsbury Wing is closed for building work, giving an opportunity to attend to the paintings there, and Samira visits the conservation studio and the framing workshop. She hears, too, from curator Mari Elin Jones in Aberystwyth about how during the Second World War the entire National Gallery collection was evacuated to a slate quarry in north Wales. The gallery's historians, Susanna Avery-Quash and Alan Crookham, show Samira photos of this period, and documents from the very beginning