Description
Book SynopsisCreating 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.
Table of ContentsForeword; 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
