Creating the V&A tells the definitive story of the formative years of London’s world-renowned Victoria and Albert Museum and the gathering of its early collections in the decade between the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the death of Prince Albert in 1861.
The story of the V&A’s genesis is often centred on the first director and first curator (Henry Cole and J. C. Robinson), and their competing agendas for design reform and connoisseurship. And yet there is an untold story of how the young royal couple for whom it is named were highly instrumental in the establishment of the museum, as public supporters and large-scale lenders before a permanent collection was in place. The book is also full of fascinating and colourful stories of the strategies deployed to harvest treasures on the market as the young museum sought to fill its rapidly expanding buildings and compete with the British Museum and the Crystal Palace.
For anyone interested in the history of collecting and curating, and for all fans of this legendary London museum, Creating the V&A explains how the foundational collections established parameters which still inform the museum’s collecting policies, role and identity today.
By:
Julius Bryant
Imprint: Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 270mm,
Width: 228mm,
ISBN: 9781848223493
ISBN 10: 1848223498
Series: V&A 19th-Century Series
Pages: 176
Publication Date: 26 March 2019
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Foreword; PART I: A Teaching Collection, 1837–51; Introduction: Aims and Claims; Somerset House: The School of Design Collection; The Crystal Palace: Shopping at the Great Exhibition in 1851; PART II: International Collections, 1852–7; Marlborough House: A ‘Museum of Ornamental Manufactures’; Royal Collectors, Lenders, Donors, and the Planning of ‘Albertopolis’; Hunting for ‘Art Treasures’; The Gherardini Collection of Italian Renaissance Sculpture; The Soulages Collection; The Bernal and the Gigli–Campana Collections; Architectural Sculpture; Furniture and Paintings; Shopping in Paris: the Soltykoff Collection; Collecting the Contemporary; A Royal Opening, 20 June 1857; PART III: Displays and Debates, 1857–61; A Visit to the ‘Omnium-Gatherum’; Exhibiting Photography; The South Kensington Museum on Trial; ‘The Royal Albert Museum’; Appendices; Select Bibliography; Notes; Acknowledgements; Index
Julius Bryant is Keeper of Word and Image at the Victoria and Albert Museum and author of Designing the V&A: The Museum as a Work of Art (1857–1909) (Lund Humphries, 2017).
