A Comparative Analysis of Anachrony in the Narrative Discourse of the Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery in London based on Gerard Genette's Theory

Although the term and metaphor of narratives are widely used in museological literature, there are still very few studies about what and how narrative is and the existing approaches, especially in cultural studies, have dealt more with critical aspects. The methodology of this research follows a descriptive-analytical approach and is situated in the framework of "narrative theory" based on the views of Gerard Genet. It addresses the question of how and by what techniques a chain of narrative units or events are presented through the formation of narrative discourse in art museums. And in this regard, by analyzing one of the main categories of literary narratology, namely the time in narrative and especially with a comparative study of the category of "order" or "anchronies" for the museum exhibition, how to achieve a way to analyze the museum narrative and its installation based on the theory of narrative?
After reviewing the previous approaches experienced in the installation of the National Gallery of London and analyzing the "Sainsbury Wing" section as a case study, it was concluded that aesthetical and practical principles in architecture and implementation of composition and visual aspects in the installation create the same narrative anachronies that we know as one of the literary tools in the narrative.
In designing the architecture of this section of the National Gallery, Robert Venturi, with a functionalist approach to provide space for a real experience of seeing paintings that goes beyond just a museum visit, has been able to present the museum chronological narrative, and by creating several windows and suspensions, through spatial relationships and through what has been identified in this study from the perspective of narratology as types of external analepsis and prolepsis, has achieved narration in this museum. Therefore, although Gerard Genet considered narrative to be more specific to literature, this study shows that the main components of narrative discourse analysis, such as time and order in his views, can be applied to exhibition narrative.