Creating the VA: Victoria And Albert's Museum (18511861) [Hardcover]

Creating the V&Atells the definitive story of the formative years of Londons 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&As 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&Aexplains how the foundational collections established parameters which still inform the museums collecting policies, role and identity today.

This book tells the storyof the formative years of Londons world-renowned Victoria and Albert Museumand the gathering of its early collections in the decade between the GreatExhibition of 1851 and the death of Prince Albert in 1861.

Julius Bryant is Keeper of Word and Image at the Victoriaand Albert Museum and author ofDesigningthe V&A: The Museum as a Work of Art (18571909)(Lund Humphries, 2017).

Foreword; PART I: A Teaching Collection, 183751; 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, 18527; Marlborough House: A Museum of Ornamental Manufactures; Royal Collectors, Lenders, Donors, and the Planning lÓ+