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Victoria and Albert Museum

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists

Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London. Museum housing the world's greatest collection of applied art as well as a large and varied collection of fine art. It was the brainchild of Prince Albert and grew out of the Great Exhibition (1851), the profits from which were used to buy a site in South Kensington for a cultural centre of museums and colleges. Whilst the site was being developed, the nucleus of the collection, consisting of objects of applied art bought from the Great Exhibition, was temporarily displayed at Marlborough House and named the Museum of Manufactures. This opened in 1852 and the following year it was renamed the Museum of Ornamental Art. At this time the Central School of Practical Art (which became the Royal College of Art) was also based in Marlborough House. In 1857 both institutions moved to South Kensington, where the museum collections soon expanded greatly in range and size. A new building on the same site was begun in 1899, designed by Sir Aston Webb, and at the ceremony of laying the foundation stone by Queen Victoria, the name of the museum was changed to ‘The Victoria and Albert Museum’. The building was opened by King Edward VII in 1909; at this time the scientific collections were moved to the nearby Science Museum. Prince Albert's ideal when he conceived the museum was to improve the standard of design in Britain by making the finest models available for study, and the first director, Sir Henry Cole (1808–82), echoed this when he declared his policy was ‘to assemble a splendid collection of objects representing the application of fine arts to manufacture’. However, the collections have—through a flood of acquisitions—become extraordinarily diverse, and a later director, Sir Roy Strong (1935– ), has written that ‘Any visitor to the Victoria and Albert Museum today is likely to be bemused as to what exactly is the central thread that animates these discrepant if marvellous collections. The answer is that there is none. For over a century the Museum has proved an extremely capacious handbag.’ It incorporates, for example, the national collections of post-classical sculpture (excluding modern, the province of the Tate), of British miniatures, of watercolours, and English silversmiths'; work. The National Art Library is also part of the museum. There are great collections of ceramics, furniture, and musical instruments, and Oriental art is strongly represented. The celebrated highlights include Raphael's tapestry cartoons (on loan from the Royal Collection), which form the most important ensemble of High Renaissance art outside Italy, and the collection of Constable's work—the largest anywhere (the bulk of it was presented by his daughter).

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© The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists 2003, originally published by Oxford University Press 2003.

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